SPEAKERS:

Rachel Thompson, Crystal Randall Barnett, Kimberly Peterson, Miche Genest, Meli Walker, Andrea Martineau, Wendy Atwell

Rachel Thompson:

Welcome luminous writers to the Write, Publish and Shine podcast. I’m your host, author, and literary magazine editor Rachel Thompson. This podcast explores how to write and share your brilliant writing with the world. In each episode, we delve into specifics on how to polish and prepare your writing for publication and the journey from emerging writer to published author.

In this episode, I talk to six writers in my Writerly Love Writing community about writing through the senses.  This conversation was a follow up to a series of guided writing sessions we did, with each focusing on prompts related to the senses.  You’ll hear from these writers all emerging and many in various stages in the process of writing their first book-length projects in various genres.  In this showcase, you’ll hear each writer represent a sense and how they apply it to their writing and they will read from their work as well.  My aim here is to help make sensitivity really grounded and specific to you, dear listener. I also offer a taste of the experience we had in our six senses of writing workshop with prompts for each sense. So grab a notebook, and hit pause to do some free writing around the senses. When we get to each prompt, you can save them all for later. Just note that all of the prompts that you hear in the episode will be available in the show notes for this episode of the write, publish and shine podcast, you will find them at rachelthompson.co/podcast/64.

Joining us today is Wendy Atwell who will discuss the sense of sight. Crystal Barnett, who will talk about the sense of smell. Miche Genest is here to talk about taste. Andrea Martineau, who’s going to discuss the hearing. Meli Walker is going to talk about the sense of touch and Kimberly Peterson will cover the mysterious sixth sense. Thank you all for being here for that.

I’m just going to jump right in and start with you Wendy with sight, and talk about the visual sense, which is one that’s not as overlooked maybe as some senses. But it is just as important to focus on our writing. I wanted to start by just tuning into your sensory experience recently. So what are some things that you observed visually recently, and how is the visual sense showing up in your writing these days?

Wendy Atwell:

I think for me, one of the things I’ve noticed about tuning in, like specializing in a sense and with sight is that I’ve been working on a practice where I note five things every day that I observed, and if I go about the day, without intentionality of lucky, I see different things. I’m looking for things in the commonplace every day like walking my dog. But then notice the smaller details along the way that normally I wouldn’t notice because I have a running catalog. So that’s definitely one of the things.

Rachel Thompson:

I’m wondering if you can track. I know you’re working on a memoir, a brilliant memoir, and you’ve been doing a lot of writing practice, I’m just wondering if you can track how you’ve changed in the way that you use the senses, but maybe the visual sense specifically, in your writing.

Wendy Atwell:

One of the main ways that I’ve changed with using the visual sense is thinking about it in terms of the deep point of view, where I’m placing the reader and seeing it versus interpreting it for the reader to see, that would mean that I removed that I saw a part, which has been really hard for me to do due to catching myself filtering. So just thinking about experientially being in deep point of view and being in the active voice, even if I’m writing a past tense scene, which a lot of memoir is, just placing myself back in my shoes of that time, but trying to make it live for the reader.

Rachel Thompson:

That is great. You’ve described Wendy and I think it’s really good to mention the filter words, because it’s a good tip for any writer who wants to go more deeply into their senses. I know that you, Wendy, read widely and lots of interesting texts, I’m always getting awesome book recommendations from you. So I’m wondering what you have noticed recently about the senses in your reading, if there’s anything specifically around sight or even all the senses.

Wendy Atwell:

I just finished a really good book by… Oh, I think her name is Marie NDiaye. It’s N and then capital D, Y, I, A, Y, E, and it’s called “Self-Portrait in Green.” It’s sort of a magical realism story about a woman. I read that it was a subversion of the memoir. So it’s almost like she’s writing about the possibilities of what could have been in her life. One of the main scenes is how she sees a woman every day when she’s driving her kids to school. She’s standing by a banana tree, and she’s in green. Then one day she asked her children, if she sees the woman, and they all say, they haven’t seen her. So, it moves into the space of the imagination, or like a dreamlike space. It is all about seeing. It’s about seeing in a way that tells you that sometimes your senses lie to you, or that you’re not really seeing things that other people see. It was a great story.

Rachel Thompson:

I will be probably adding that to my reading list as well. Thank you. That sounds great.

Wendy Atwell:

When I say great, it wasn’t cheerful. It was beautifully written, but not cheerful, it was pretty disturbing and fascinating. It caused me to reflect about- especially like, in my middle- I’m 54, thinking about the possibilities of life, like that six degrees of separation and like: What could have been versus what is, and not always in a happy way. So yeah, just a heads up about that part.

Rachel Thompson:

So I asked you to bring some reading that shows how you’ve been using the visual sense. Would you like to [sysco 6:16] repress that?

Wendy Atwell:

This is for my memoir, I started writing it out of the exercises from the actual Six Senses workshop that we did. So I want to thank you for that. I feel like the prompts that you gave us were so helpful.

“I sit in a polygon of pasture on a dewy morning, stewing in the messiness of an overcast sky, and swatting at the tiny gnats hovering around my face. I didn’t yet notice what existed between these annoying ticklish bugs, the size of a freckle, and the boundless atmosphere above leading into eternity. Yet to the side of the road, small animal trails meander through the tall grass, cacti and brush, their directions made for reasons unbeknownst to me. In South Texas, the ants have their own roads too, where they have worn the ground bear. The animal trails were only slightly larger, Had that been made by mice, rabbits, cows or deer. Do the creatures share these roads? The [sysco 7:19] Tithonus call these trails [unintelligible 7:20] from Spanish, “To breach”. Each time I saw one, I felt curious about where they lead. If I was to follow it into Mount Seir, what would I discover? But unless we were wearing our snake boots, we stayed on the roads and drove through the [sysco 7:36] mountain. So, I missed the magic.”

Rachel Thompson:

Thank you, Wendy, I can definitely see those trails that’s very visually evocative. And I’m so glad that you found the prompts helpful, too.

Wendy Atwell:

Yeah, thank you.

Rachel Thompson:

So here is a prompt, first of the six prompts that I’ll offer in this episode. This one is on the sense of sight. And I’ll note that if you’re listening in podcast land out there, you might want to pause and just do some timed writing for a period while you’re listening, or you might want to gather all of those prompts and the prompts will all be up in our show notes for this episode. This is episode number 65. So, it’s up at RachelThompson.co/podcast/65. This visual art writing expresses prompt is to think about a memorable work of art you viewed including sculptures, paintings, mixed media work, performance art, sidewalk chalk, graffiti, fashion, any other visual creations, you have had the joy, the pleasure of witnessing, and then write about this work of art and really let your visual senses go wild. You could choose to do this and all of our prompts from your point of view or the point of view of a character that you’ve been working with. So go ahead and pause and write right now, or save it for later, once you’ve heard all of the senses described through our lovely writers who are here with us today.

So the next sense is the sense of smell. I want to thank Crystal Barnett for being here to talk with us about the sense of smell today, and start by just asking you: What are some scents that you’ve noticed recently/

Crystal Randall Barnett:

So it’s been pretty warm here in Waterloo Region, Ontario. So there’s a lot of smells, like the top of the soil has a thaw, which reminds me of the smell of spring in this area, which is really lovely. That also means that we have these beautiful big spruce trees in our backyard. So they’re dropping needles into the mud, which has sort of a piney and forest descent. That’s just always really heavenly. And the last thing I’ve noticed, with this warmer weather, we’ve had a lot of fog lately, like a steady diet of fog. I’ve noticed that that smells like the arena I grew up in as a kid. So that’s been really interesting to notice as well.

Rachel Thompson:

Like a skating arena, you mean. A rink?

Crystal Randall Barnett:

Yeah.

Rachel Thompson:

It’s like,

“I wonder how [unintelligible 10:01] plays it.”

A compound is created to keep the ice frozen. That’s great. Have any of these sense of spring, that come into your writing recently too?

Crystal Randall Barnett:

Unfortunately, not recently, but I do find myself when I’m out walking around just jotting down what I’m experiencing, what I’m smelling. Often, even the beginning of a poem will pop into my head. So, I have these down on my phone to access later. Sometimes they germinate into a longer poem or stanza, or like something, I can turn into a finished work, which is always nice.

Rachel Thompson:

Crystal, I want to ask you: How did you use the senses in your writing before we did the six senses series, and how does that compare to now?

Crystal Randall Barnett:

When I started writing again, a few years ago, I found that I’ve always been like a pretty embodied person. So I’m always really excited about all the sensory experiences going on. But I’d be so excited about writing about nature, that my writing would just get really flowery. I was just very enthusiastic to describe the beauty I was experiencing in front of me versus maybe digging a little bit deeper, and talking more about what else… you know, that could represent. That was something I’ve been working on over the past year. Anyway, when the workshop came up, it came at like a perfect time.

“Rachel had some really interesting prompts that I found, help take writing the senses in an unexpected direction”,

which really makes the work feel fresh. I think the thing that stuck with me the most, from those prompts, were prompts [sysco 11:32] that were out of motion. That’s often what I think about. So for example, when I’m outdoors now, because again, I really like to pull imagery from nature. I tried to think about how this could be a gateway to a poem, or maybe it’s just a greater awareness of the world around me that I can use later, I tried to think about how I can uniquely use a sense in order to enhance what I’m trying to say. So yeah, I’ve been able to further develop my craft with that in mind, and I think it’s been a really meaningful addition to my writing.

Rachel Thompson:

I know you brought some writing that shows how you’ve been using the sense of smell today, Crystal, and we would love to hear it. So please read.

Crystal Randall Barnett:

“The church doors yawn, and the cleansing summer air breathes through them. Essence stress from its slumbering valley. Familiar, but without definition. It is reminiscent, a framed canvas hymnals, an hourglass glue bottles from Sunday School, rubber [sysco 12:25] legs kissing the page of bodies genuflecting of the vast scale sanctuary that hasn’t seen an open window in a week, a time traveling pheromone that links me to childhood, to home, to beliefs, health and [sysco 12:38] clapping hands.”

Rachel Thompson:

Can you tell me what you have noticed about the senses, and in particular, the sense of smell when you’re reading?

Crystal Randall Barnett:

Smell is a really powerful thing. I’ve double checked this, but you might know this, research has shown that smell is the sense that actually links us to memory, the strongest and is also really linked to emotion. If you think about how popular essential oils and diffusers are or like that urban legend where you’re trying to sell your house and you’re supposed to bake cookies for the potential buyers walking through. I think smell elicits a lot of feelings in us. I think it can really transport me personally. Again, nature smells come into play a lot for me, and that just brings a lot of peace and joy. So a smell specifically I think I’ve been asking myself what other memories- specifically because the link to memory, the smell, or emotions come with the scent, or what would the opposite of those memories and emotions be so you can go in a different direction. I think it’s a little bit like trying to put together a creative puzzle. And I’m not normally a puzzle person. But when I’m writing, I really love to connect the sense to the emotion or an experience and figure out how to communicate all that to a reader in a way that will resonate. It gives more substance and vibrance to my writing, and using the senses in this way can really help make every word count.

Rachel Thompson:

What do you think it means to be a sensitive writer in relation to the senses?

Crystal Randall Barnett:

Yeah, so as a sensitive writer, I think part of it is just being in touch with my body and how it feels and how external stimuli are making it feel, not being afraid to explore those feelings and find ways to express them. So I have the personality type that always wants to dig deep with others to really get to the root of what’s really going on in our lives. Feelings are obviously a big part of that. I want to do this in my writing as well. So, when I’m writing the senses, for me, it’s become a gateway to writing about not only the beauty of my sensory experiences or the natural world around me, but also about our humanity and our shared experiences. So when the reader can relate to our emotions or experiences and the sensory part that you’re writing, hopefully what flows through that will be meaningful for them as well.

Rachel Thompson:

So the prompt I have for smell does relate also to what you’re saying about memory. Is that something that- we’ve always heard, but I’m so glad that you confirm that Crystal, too, because I also thought that was true. It’s definitely been true of my experience. So this was also the prompt that we did in the series. And it is to choose one of your earliest memories, you can always do this in any promise from your point of view or the point of view of a character you’ve been working with. Although, as we’ve said, this works really well. Thinking about your own memories, because that is such a sense that’s really triggered when we think of the past. And then the prompt to write would be:

“What did this earliest memories smell like?”

Then to describe that, so thinking of that earliest memory, and then just immediately going to the sense of smell and trying to embody yourself in that place, and just imagine what are the things you may have smelled.

So, I’m going to turn us to the sense of taste now. We have Miche Genest here today to talk about taste, which is perfect, because Miche, as a chef, and cookbook author, who’s also working on a memoir is very equipped to talk about the sense of taste, and some myths. My first question for you is: Working with food means that you started out writing with attention to your sense of taste. Is that something that you immediately put on the page?

Miche Genest:

Yes, it was reading about food really required that I refined how to describe taste, how to find words that would evoke the right feeling, or the feeling that I wanted to evoke in the reader. I used to write restaurant reviews, and edit restaurant reviews for a magazine. It was really instructive to see what in the reviews that I was editing was really working, I often found and still do find in my own writing that sometimes just naming the food is enough, because it evokes the readers own memories of that flavor of that taste. I kind of think of that as in a way the easy way out in writing about taste. But I think it’s also fair enough, because it’s so effective in the way that it asks the reader to respond with their own sensitivity, with their own body memory of a flavor.

Rachel Thompson:

I love that thought Miche, it’s like knowing when to describe and then when to evoke.

Miche Genest:

Yeah, just as Crystal was saying about the sense of smell and memory, I think there’s a really strong relation between the sense of taste and memory, a flavor can evoke a place and experience a time, immediately. So today, for example, I have made a lentil soup that I used to make in Greece. when I tasted it, it just brought me back there immediately. It was so familiar. I can suddenly smell all kinds of other smells, and tastes, all kinds of other tastes oregano, olive oil, tomato, that were not even in the dish. But a soup evokes all of those memories. All of the senses are powerful. I’m learning more and more about smell and taste, and I’m realizing how very powerful they are, and also how difficult they are for us to describe. I’ve been reading a book called “Corked“, which is about a journalist who immerses herself in the world of wine.

So, she has to train herself in how to taste and how to smell. In reading that book, I learned that sense and smell have always- in the Western Aristotelian lexicon of ideas. Since then, smells have been degraded, they’re considered degraded senses, because they’re animals, they’re in the body. The higher senses are vision, and hearing, especially sense of smell, are the poor cousins. But in other cultures, that’s not the case. There are other cultures that have a huge vocabulary for smell and taste and are able to access that vocabulary immediately when asked in tests, and studies when asked to describe a flavor or a smell. So I’m really interested in developing both taste and sense more, as well as learning how to write about them.

Rachel Thompson:

I love that Miche. I don’t want to miss that lentil soup opportunity to mention that- Because you mentioned Greece and your memoir is based in Greece too. So I’m just wondering how- then like you’re in the kitchen cooking and then are you going back to the page and going,

“Okay, how do I get these things down that are triggering those memories of being in that place?”

As you’re writing a memoir from many years ago, too.

Miche Genest:

Yes, absolutely. I’m also remembering- just in the course of this conversation that we’ve been having, I’m also remembering that when I went to Greece, I was a blank slate. Everything was new to me. Everything that I smelled, tasted, heard and saw, was all brand new. I’m just realizing now as we speak how important it is to remember that when I’m writing. I maybe didn’t necessarily have the words for what it was that I was smelling. I know now that one of the dominant smells in the hills was wild Tarragon. But I didn’t know that then. I need to go back and remember what it was like to smell Tarragon. We didn’t cook with Tarragon. So, I would have to make a leap, and remember what it was like to smell and taste wild Marjoram, which we cooked with, and how I figured out how to place that flavor in my own personal repertoire of flavors and what it meant to me. So it’s almost like going back again, to that first time experience and trying to recreate. You find the words that will recreate the experience for me, but also evoke it for the reader.

Rachel Thompson:

You brought some writing today to show how you’ve been using the sense of taste.

Miche Genest:

I did. It’s not from my Greek work. It’s from something else, but I hope that’s okay.

Rachel Thompson:

Of course.

Miche Genest:

I am just going to read one paragraph.

“You have to do that in situations like this where the chef is famous and the maître d’, a martinet, you have to surrender yourself and pay attention only to the food as though the chef were a God and your submission is your offering. So the fermented carrot, a sour, a dead, dull taste, the scallop, briny, kind of free. The pig’s blood, caramelized gravy, the root vegetables cooked in leaves that have overwintered under the snow. Oh, the farm in the fall, when you helped grandpa pick russet apples in the ancient orchard, and you were never in trouble for anything.”

Rachel Thompson:

Thank you, Miche. That last line. That wasn’t too sensory with that. I mean, I definitely tasted those other things in space too. Yeah, but that last line really gets… Yeah, thank you.

Miche Genest:

Thank you.

Rachel Thompson:

So, the prompt is to prepare a meal. So it would be to write instructions for how to prepare a meal, make it food you enjoy cooking with others, or on your own or to have cooked for you, and you can think about who you are. Or your narrator is instructing how to cook and why to describe all the flavors of the ingredients as you prepare your instructions. You can tune into all of your senses when it comes to the preparation of the food, the colors and textures and sounds as well as the flavors. So that’s a prompt that we wrote to as well in the Six Senses, summer series. I think there are some delicious recipes that came out of that.

I’m interrupting the showcase of wonderful writers who illustrate the Six Senses in writing for a moment for good reason. I want to let you know that there are still spots, open, just a few spots in Write, Publish, and Shine Intensive, a five month program for writers who want to generate, revise and publish new works of writing with expert support and a community of writers at their back. At the end of your intensive:

• You will have polished several stories, poems, or hybrid work.
• Submit your work to publications that fit you.
• Prepared for a big yes for your writing, and your writing dreams.
• & found your place in a community of writers.

If you’re ready to write, publish, and shine, this intensive program is for you. You can learn more about the Write, Publish, and Shine Intensive, and sign up at RachelThompson.co/intensive. Now back to our Six Senses Showcase.

Alright, so I’m gonna turn to Andrea now, who’s here to talk about hearing. What are some things that you heard recently, Andrea, and did you write about any of them?

Andrea Martineau:

I have been paying a lot of attention to my daughter and her friends’ voices, they’re all seven or eight years old. So, some of them still have that squeaky high pitched kid voice and some of them have more of a normal sounding voice now and they’ve started reading so they’ve had this weird vocabulary burst where they’re still talking like a little kid, but then they throw all these little peppers of a very grown up language into there. So I’ve been kind of jotting down the funny sayings that I hear or the ones that really strike me as like,

“Wow, that’s really observant or intriguing to come from a seven year old.”

So, I haven’t written anything formally from it. But I’ve jotted down lots of nuggets that I’ve finally come back to.

Rachel Thompson:

Oh, that’s such a great habit. I love that you have that habit, Andrea. Because I’m curious about if you can think about how you’ve been using your senses in writing, and if you think about, maybe just your development in the last fall as a writer too and what kind of attention you’ve been bringing to the senses in your writing these days?

Andrea Martineau:

I feel, before I tended to leave out certain senses, my pieces came off as if you were an observer of a situation, but I frequently left out things like taste and touch weren’t included very often. So now I feel like I have a more well-rounded approach, because I’m actively practicing trying to get a little bit of each of those senses in there.

Rachel Thompson:

Yeah, and spread it around a little. That’s great. Sharing sensory love.

Andrea Martineau:

Exactly.

Rachel Thompson:

You brought some writing that shows how you’ve been using the sense of hearing. Would you like to share that with us now?

Andrea Martineau:

I use the sense of hearing to help me revise and finesse this piece a little bit. It’s a poem called: “To Listen Again, Press Four.”

“To listen again, press four.

Enter your PIN, then press pound.

To reach another mailbox, press start.

Pound, you have one saved voice message.

To access your message center, press one.

To listen to all of your messages, press two.

One. Hi, Doug. It’s Sean, returning your call.

Four. Hi Doug. It’s Sean returning your call.

Four. Hi Doug. It’s Sean returning your call. The door should be fixed now, and Jake is in the office if anything pops up. I’m not sure I’ll be around.

End of message.

The building operator lives.

The building operator lives inside the voicemail.

The building operator lives inside the voicemail I inherited.

The building operator lives inside the voicemail I inherited from Doug, the old office manager.

The building operator, Sean lives inside the voicemail I inherited from Doug, the old office manager who never liked Sean.

The building operator Sean lives inside the voicemail I inherited from Doug; the old office manager never liked Sean because he rarely returned his calls.

The dead building operator Sean lives inside the voicemail I inherited from Doug, the old office manager who nobody really liked.

He never liked Sean because he rarely returned his calls.

The dead building operator Sean lives inside the voicemail I inherited from Doug, the old office manager who nobody really liked.

He never liked Shawn because he rarely returned his calls because he was too busy.

Sean, the dead building operator lives inside the voicemail I inherited from Doug, the old office manager who never liked Sean, because he was never returning his calls, and because he was too busy dying of cancer.

To delete this message, press seven.

To save this message, press nine.

To listen again, press four.

To forward this message, press six.

For envelope information, press five.

To exit press pound.

Pound, there are no more messages.”

Rachel Thompson:

Thank you so much. Oh my gosh, that is such a piece that is meant to be read, too, and your performance of it was amazing. So, thank you, Andrea. I felt like I was listening to voicemail for a while there. It’s good. There’s something about the repetition. And also, that kind of getting into that space of- I don’t know, there’s something familiar about that voice, you’ve embodied it. So well, thank you. What do you think about, what it means to be a sensitive writer in relation to the senses?

Andrea Martineau:

I think just makes you a better writer if that makes sense. Like even if your reader hasn’t experienced the same thing your character is experiencing or the narrator of your poem is experiencing. If you’re a sensitive writer, and you’ve incorporated those details, they can still place themselves right in those shoes, rather than being just an observer kind of on the outside, they can still immerse themselves in it. So I think it means taking care and just making your craft better.

Rachel Thompson:

Thank you, I can definitely see that happening in your writing too. So that’s great. So the hearing prompt that I offer today for you to take away to write is to spend a moment just listening to all the sounds that you hear around you. If you were doing this while you’re listening to my voice, you might need to take your headphones off for a moment, and then just choose one of the things that you hear, and then write everything you know about that item. So it’s a prompt that you can kind of carry with you anywhere, and just spend that moment kind of tuning into the senses, listening and then just hearing,

“Oh, what are the subtle sounds around me things that I could write on?”

So next up, we have the sense of touch and Meli Walker will be talking about that. The sense of touch seems to me to be more typically overlooked in writing, or at least the writing I work with for emerging writers. It seems much easier to tap into some of our other senses and how it comes a bit back to what Andrea was just saying to0, about looking more well roundedly, holistically at all the senses. But I also think that this one really brings us closer to the embodiment and empathy that we really want our readers to have with narrators and protagonists. So, my first question for you, Meli, is:

“What are some things you’ve noticed with your tactile senses recently?”

Meli Walker:

I’ve really been trying to tune into where my body meets the air. You know, with touch, we think about our hands or our limbs, or even like our faces sense. The rest of the world, but thinking about, you know, my body interacting with other bodies and like the distance between us, but also where my body needs the air, I don’t know how else to say it. It’s hard to describe. Sensing my organs, my viscera, fascia, the places which mean the bones and skin, and just sensing myself in space has really been something I’m trying to observe. But I’m noticing it’s difficult to describe in words.

Rachel Thompson:

How do you write about that sense of touch? I know you brought some reading today that we’ll be hearing in a moment. But is there something that you’ve been putting by pen to page around that idea of the body meeting the world?

Meli Walker:

I mean, I was writing about it when I was looking at this work. But what I wrote, in terms of the lines I brought are about a memory. But that memory also making me think about how people leave impressions on us, even after they’re gone. So the idea that we change each other’s chemistry, when we interact, when we relate. Even if we really like being alone, we need each other. So that idea of like coregulation, or that we impact and make imprints on each other. In the same way, like Crystal mentioned the “Pine needles dropping into the mud.” That makes an impression on the ground. So writing about this person that’s no longer alive and thinking about, you know, you can’t touch someone when they’re gone. But how do they leave an imprint on you and an impression on you, and how do we change each other? So it’s like metaphorical, but it’s not actually. It’s actually quite physical. So that is the thing I’ve been working over in my mind.

Rachel Thompson:

I would love to hear you go ahead and read what you’ve brought for us today.

Meli Walker:

“Move the wool of his funeral suit.

Her laughter rooting me like soil.

When he tries on the suit for his mother before she dies at sunset.

Her hugs get longer the closer she gets to death. Soft skin between our finger bones as our hands slide apart.

A goodbye aching in my vocal cords.

Instead, I say, ‘Thank you.’

My words reached like seedlings toward her glow.

Force the floor to hold me as I walk away.

Feel the threads of the blanket on her bed. And the warm wind of her thanks you.

As the last touches of her aliveness.

Inhale.

Thank you for making me my partner.

Exhale. Thank you for taking care of my son.

Now, her memory [unintelligible 33:33] us like the bumpy burnt orange undersides of ferns after the bite of stinging nettle.

But still, we are stung.”

Rachel Thompson:

Thank you so much. You brought so much sense of touch there. It’s beautiful.

Meli Walker:

Thank you. It was hard to not focus on what the words were in that scene, so to speak. Like the words are a focus in terms of the scene, but how to show how they affect me and how they affected me. As well as all the literal physical sense of touch, but also reflecting on breath because without breath, we don’t live and so, breath being this thing that all of us share. I think I was reading Hannah Gadsby’s “A Memoir Situation, Ten Steps to Nanette.” She was talking about how breath is the thing that we all share, whether we have different abilities, disability, ways of experiencing the world, but we all share breath, and so trying to like really also think about the feeling of breath coming in and out of my body and interacting with other breath, which after the pandemic has a whole different meaning.

Rachel Thompson:

I’m not sure if you’re seeing the chat because I want to make sure that you see that people are commenting on the writing as well too and that they could feel the floorboards move, as Amanda says, the tensions shift. It was so beautiful. It’s one of those ones I want to sit with for a while too. So the touch prompt does relate actually very much to what you’re writing, working with, in your words today, Meli, and thank you again for that. Just to write about a character of your choice who misses something. They cannot touch. The character longs to touch and why can they not touch it? This could be character you or another character you’re working with, or character you read recently. So, the idea is a longing for touch.

So, for our final reader and conversation around senses, we have the sixth sense. With us today is Kimberly Peterson. Mysterious sixth sense is, I think, perfect for us to talk about Kim, because when we did the guided reading series on six senses, I had left it open to interpretation as to what the sense meant, by the most people identify with intuition. But I remember that we also spoke about the vestibular system, and the proprioceptive system with aid and balance and movement. As a nurse, you were very keenly aware of those systems and can describe them much better than I can. So, I guess my first question is really an existential one. What is the sixth sense? What does it mean to you, Kimberly? How would you describe that?

Kimberly Peterson:

I understood the sixth sense as understanding where your body is in the world, helping your reception, people take this for granted. But if you’ve had a stroke, and you forget the left side of your body exists, it’s a real challenge for people to remember. So that understanding of your body which you learn very young, and you don’t pay attention to it, is fascinating to me. That goes the other sixth sense, we have our intuition about the emotional landscape surrounding us. We don’t attune to it all the time. But it’s there, you can feel it, if you’re this sensitive intuit. You intuit it, so that’s what fascinates me, we forget where our body is in the landscape and how we know that we forget sometimes, or we don’t pay attention to the emotional landscape we see around us.

Rachel Thompson:

That’s so true. I mean, it feels like it’s also touching, no pun intended, but accidental pun, but I’m touching on what Meli too, saying about feeling the borders of yourself to within that world. I mean, obviously, there’s an overlap between a lot of these senses, too, and how they work together. I guess I’m wondering, what have you sensed with your sixth sense recently, Kimberly, if you had to wrap words around that?

Kimberly Peterson:

So what I find is, if I did in my body, all the senses we’re talking about, I can find this sense of wonder about what I see, what I smell, what I catch, if I live in that moment, and go down into: There’s my body, and where is it in the world? And how do I feel about it? What emotions come out of that? So, I think that’s where writers need to go to that emotion. That’s what drives us to connect to our readers, they felt that emotion, can we find that? Can we see that in what we see around us?

Rachel Thompson:

How do you apply that to your own writing Kimberly? What ways are you bringing that kind of embodiment and awareness and emotional sense to your own work? Or what are you noticing about your work?

Kimberly Peterson:

It’s really about asking myself: “What is this poem-” Because I mostly read poetry.

“What is this poem trying to tell me?”

So, I’ve spent this time in nature, looking deeply and repeatedly, and what is it trying to tell me because there’s an emotional subtext there. It may take me many iterations, or even leaving it away for a while reading it rough before I can come back to:

“What is this trying to tell me? Where’s the emotional connection to the world?”

Rachel Thompson:

I think that’s such a good reminder, too, is that these things take time to do this kind of deeper sense, fully sensory embodied, sensitive writing. You brought some writing that shows that you’ve been using the sixth sense in your work. Would you like to read that for us now?

Kimberly Peterson:

I’m going to give a couple of pieces that are very brief. One is more recent, and this is just me talking about freezing rain. So that’s around me all the time. When I think of it now, I think of beauty. But 25 years ago, we went through a crisis where freezing rain brought down the electrical systems. So my first thoughts aren’t just the beauty and how I was struck by it and I had to go out and touch and feel and smell it, and this is in progress. So I’m still like- and then what was it Like then when it brought down our electrical system for a month, I’m just going to read a few lines from that.

“Crystalline morning, crystal, as frozen laundry. Up to the coast, sunrise clothes in the first two digits of a maple. I clipped [unintelligible 40:17]. That Goddess of ice rain hates shimmer today.”

As I said, it’s in progress that other parts are more about that polyptych feel I had when I went out after the ice storm or drove to work in the total darkness and one that came right out of our six senses variety. Milk Thistle band,

“Chopped drought of thistle bark pod squeezes out purple [unintelligible 40:52] 10,000 different petals, [unintelligible 40:55] sunset. Until tropic mouse said out Kuni seeds. Compassed by milky filaments, as fragile as a skittle, floated down with birth. Buried in dark flat pitch dirt. [unintelligible 41:15] germinate.”

Rachel Thompson:

It’s wonderful. Thank you so much, Kimberly, it is so evocative of all the senses as well. I guess I’m wondering, what do you think it means to be a sensitive writer in relation to the senses, and the idea of sensitivity as well.

Kimberly Peterson:

So the sensitivity is being aware of all those senses, and also what they evoke in you, the taste, the smell, the memory, and what they bring you back to all of the things that they evoke, and remind you of, and feeling the mood in the room in, nature, despite, feeling that mood and going into it and sinking down into it.

Rachel Thompson:

Yeah, sinking down into it. Thank you. I love that type of phrase for it. It’s great. All right, so I’m gonna leave us with a final prompt, which is the sixth sense prompt. So it really is just what is your sixth sense been telling you? What is your sixth sense been telling you today, you can take this as intuition or write about the systems that control your balance and how you meet the world, and movement in your body. And you can also try to embody a character as well too, and right from their point of view, in terms of how they’re meeting the world, or what their intuition may be telling them. One of the things- actually, I keep mentioning that other character thing, because I did find, when we did the series that people were writing in all different genres, they can release writing poetry, but there are people also writing fiction, who are finding this such a good way to dig into the sensory experience of their characters, and then getting sort of richer character development through that too.

So that is everybody, the six folks who came I’m just so grateful to all of you, really just for the way that you’re showing up for your writing and showing up for your writing community to share what you’re working on in your writing. So, thank you.

The Write, Publish and Shine Intensive is a five month program for writers who want to generate, revise and publish new works of writing with expert support and a community of writers at your back. At the end of your intensive:

• You will have polished several stories, poems, or hybrid work.
• Submit your work to publications that fit you.
• Prepared for a big yes for your writing in your writing dreams.
• & found your place in a community of writers.

If you’re ready to write, publish and shine, this intensive program is for you. You can learn more about the Write, Publish and Shine Intensive and sign up at RachelThompson.co/intensive.

So, you heard today from emerging writers:

• Wendy Atwell, who discussed the sense of sight and her project to notice more with the senses. By the way, the book recommendation that she shared with us is also in our show notes.
• Crystal Barnett was here to talk about the sense of smell and its inherent link to memory.
• Miche Genest brought her unique chef perspective to the sense of taste.
• Andrea Martineau read a poem that felt meant to be heard as she illustrated the sense of hearing.
• Well, Meli Walker, who you’ve heard on the podcast before, as a collaborator of mine, also brought great insight to how touch is really about where our body ends, and the world begins.
• Well, Kimberly Peterson, as a nurse and sensitive poet, really brought home our mission as sensitive writers to be fully aware of how we move in the world.

I’m so grateful to all six of them, and to all of the writers who came to our six senses of writing series because they really brought their most sensitive, their warmest and most generous selves into that next experience and created something beautiful in their writing and in our community.

I’ll remind you that you can find all of the prompts that you heard in the episode up in the show notes at RachelThompson.co/podcast/64. The Write, Publish and Shine podcast is brought to you by me, Rachel Thompson. You can learn more about the work I do to help writers write, publish and shine at RachelThompson.co. When you’re there, sign up for my Writerly Love letters sent every other week, sometimes weekly. Lately, it’s been weekly, and filled with support for your writing practice.

If this episode encouraged you to engage your senses more deeply in your writing. I would love to hear all about it. You can find me at hello@RachelThompson.co and tell other luminous writers about this episode. Please do this by sending them to the podcast at RachelThompson.co/podcast, or telling them to search for Write, Publish and Shine wherever they get their podcasts. Thank you so much for listening. I encourage you to keep observing and reporting your observations through all of your senses.

So, the writers who shared their work today spoke to me from San Antonio, Texas on Jumanos, Coahuiltecan, Ndé Kónitsąąíí Gokíyaa (Lipan Apache), and Tonkawa land, Waterloo, Ontario on the Haldimand Tract treaty land and the traditional territory of the Neutral, Anishinaabe, and Haudenosaunee peoples, Whitehorse, Yukon on the traditional territories of the Ta’an Kwäch’än Council and Kwänlin Dün First Nation, from oskana kâ-asastêki (Regina, Saskatchewan) on Treaty 4 Territory. Treaty 4 encompasses the lands of the Cree, Saulteaux (SO-TOE), Dakota, Nakota, Lakota, and on the homeland of the Métis Nation, on the traditional and contemporary lands of the W̱SÁNEĆ and lək̓ʷəŋən (Lekwungen)peoples, and from lands colonially known as Ottawa, which is on unceded Algonquin territory.

Books mentioned in the episode:

1. Self-Portrait in Green by Marie NDiaye
2. Corked by Kathryn Borel
3. A Memoir Situation, Ten Steps to Nanette by Hannah Gadsby’s