WHY WE HAVE CREATIVE WRITING AT MHCAN

"Words! Anything! Nevermind whether or not thy make sense. Write!…keep it hitched to a pencil, and hold it down to the slow rhythm of writing – the practice may tame her somewhat. . . Because she is I."

Lara Jefferson, These Are My Sisters (1948)

People with diagnosed mental illnesses need to have the opportunity to do creative writing for three reasons. 1. Many have extraordinary talent which needs development and an audience. 2. Writing comes from a different part of the brain than speaking; the act of writing puts a structure on people’s sometimes chaotic experiences. 3. Through our writing the public can know and feel what it is like to be a diagnosed person in our society.

After I was labeled a schizophrenic at age 17, I did poorly on objective tests in college but managed to squeak by on my written work. I refused to drop out of school as my psychiatrist suggested because forcing myself to read and write was the only order I could feel in the universe. Later I wrote a novel and while it was being seriously considered by Alfred A. Knopf, I grew paranoid, had no community with which to check out what I was thinking, and demanded my manuscript back, shouting strange things over the phone. Years later when I had another break with reality I volunteered to type a book for the Resource Center for Nonviolence and New Society Publishers. I was afraid to leave the house and my hands shook over the keyboard. But, I knew that typing sentences and editing was my way back to recovery. And I also knew that I needed a community like MHCAN which didn’t exist yet.

In 1991 after being in the presence of nearly 2,000 mental health clients at the Alternatives Conference, I started a newsletter called The Alternative Report. At the same time I started a creative writing group, making up imaginative assignments every week. I spent a summer in the California Writing Project at UCSC for teachers of creative writing. Soon we had a nucleus of consumer essayists and poets and we applied for grants from our city and county Cultural Councils to hire professional writing teachers to do workshops for us. Ray Zager taught early classes in Diary Writing for us at Louden Nelson Center. Later Celine-Marie Pascale and David Thorn, accomplished academic poets, taught for MHCAN. In 1999 Phil Wagner, an organizer of poetry readings and a fine poet of the National Writer’s Union, became our teacher. Clients are able to teach classes when they choose as well. We published two collections of our work, Voices & Visions, and gave readings at a local bookstore. Petyr Meidus edited another collection called As We Were. In 1998 our drop-in center still offers poetry and art classes weekly and provides a computer so people can type their work. We not only have our own newsletter The We Can Courier, but we publish the state network’s quarterly newsletter, the Cal Net Gazette.

What is essential for a Writing Class?

A Safe environment

Time and Quiet.

Choice

Response

Community

1. Structure Writing is hard and a group will talk on any subject rather than write. An instructional plan with some assignments is essential.

"When power leads man toward arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the areas of man’s concern, poetry reminds him of his richness and diversity of his experience. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses, for it establishes the basic human truths which must serve as the touchstone of our judgment."

John F. Kennedy, Amhurst College Address, October 26, 1963