A is for AWA

In October of 2016, I went to the Examined Life Conference in Iowa City. It fit me perfectly, a writing conference sponsored by a medical school. The keynote speaker was Dr. Rita Charon, whom I would later study with at Columbia. The conference changed my life, mostly because of someone I met there.

I elected to take a preconference workshop. The scheduled facilitator didn’t show up, so one of the conference leaders took her place. He began by suggesting that the class do a freewrite, but a woman named Sue Reynolds stopped him.

The Write Kind of Feedback

“When I go to workshops like this at home,” she said, “we usually start with a prompt.” Sue was being modest so as not to upset the leader. She is an accomplished writing group leader with many years of experience.

“Oh, you want a prompt?” asked the group leader. “Okay, write about a moment in which everything changed or a moment that changed things.” And we were off, writing several times over the three hours of the morning. I wrote about work, about my husband, about my office space, about my need for routine. I filled page after page in my notebook. And I got feedback, generous and encouraging feedback that made me want to keep writing, that made me want to return to the workshop setting.

The Next Steps

Later in that conference, Sue led a breakout session on how to facilitate writing with the Amherst Writers & Artists (AWA) method. The audience members paired off and read our writing to each other. My partner was an anesthesiologist from Tennessee. He enjoyed what I wrote. The preconference and the breakout session planted the seeds.  In August of 2017, I met Sue again, this time at an AWA Facilitator Training. There I also met women who are still my friends and writing companions.

What does this story have to do with micro transformation? That spark of feeling when someone heard and appreciated my writing was a micro transformation, It was a little taste of what I experienced over years of writing in community, in safe and supportive groups. The prompt I was given proved to be prophetic. I still write about moments in which everything changed. Micro transformations add up to a big transformation over time. I transformed into a writer.