Day 11: Let your words take flight

With Sophie Nicholls, author of Dear Writing

Words can take flight in many different forms. (Photo by Sophie Nicholls)

In our everyday language, we often use the idea of flying and flight as metaphor: time flies; she’s a high-flier. We are hard wired to the primal experience of fight or flight. To fly can mean to escape, to take flight from something; and it can also mean that we find our freedom, take off, launch something upon the air, soar through open spaces.

Perhaps it’s no accident that the idea of soaring high, that heady exhilarated feeling of success or fulfilment, also carries inside it the possibility of risk. To speak of flying is to know that we can also fall. After all, we are embodied creatures and metaphor is one way that our bodily feelings find their way into language.

Here’s a playful technique for letting go of unhelpful things or launching a long-held dream:

Take a piece of paper. A4 might be easiest to begin with.

Use this paper to either:

1. Write all of the things that you’d like to let go of, wave goodbye to, or stop carrying around with you.

OR

2. Write a long-held dream or secret desire, something you long to launch into the world, a part of yourself that needs to take flight.

When you’re ready, fold your piece of paper into the shape of an aeroplane. If your folding skills are a little rusty, you can watch a quick how-to video here.

Now take your plane outside and launch it into the air.

If getting outside isn’t possible for you, it will be just as effective to launch your plane across the room or even out of a (safe ground floor) window.

Intention is key here. As you ready your plane, think about what it is that you’re letting go of or launching into flight.

Watch your words leave your hand. Notice how you feel.

I'd love to hear in the Comments how it goes.

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Sophie Nicholls, author of Dear Writing

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For more scholarly writing inspiration, check out these resources from the curators of #AcWriMoments:

• ScholarShape by Margy Thomas

• WriteSPACE by Helen Sword

See all Contributors’ bios here