Writing the Natural Way: Using Right-Brain Techniques to Release Your Expressive Powers
By Gabriele Lusser Rico
� 1983
J. P. Tarcher
279p

Subject: Writing; Creativity; Writing exercises;

I can't begin to measure the degree or the ways of influence Ms. Rico's technique has had on my writing since I first discovered this book in 1987. It was her clustering technique that gave me a reliable tool for bypassing my pesky critic, the stern editor that wants to control every word before it is even written. Clustering is a way to tap into the right brain where image and metaphor and emotion weave a web of meaning to hang your words on.

To generate a cluster simply take a blank sheet of paper. Write a word or phrase in the center which represents a topic or theme. Draw a circle around it. Then off in any direction at any distance write another word or phrase that associates with the first. Draw a circle around it and then draw a line connecting the first bubble to the second. Write a third word associated with either or both of the first two words then circle it and connect it. Keep this up at a fairly steady pace without stopping to think overmuch until the page is a web of interconnected words and phrases or until something grabs your interest and you can't resist the urge to start writing.

Now, I haven't given away even one percent of the wealth of writing wisdom imparted in this book. Rico provides humorous exercises for developing other elements essential to the most transforming and transfixing writing, writing created from the stuff of your self that transcends self, place and time. My poem,   Remembering Dandelions , was the result of an exercise at the end of Chapter 3: The Childhood Origins of Natural Writing.