36 Palavras - About 36 Words

About this writing project

Hello! My name is Patrícia and I love to write.

Writing has been part of my life for so long now. First as a teenager, then as a journalist, editorial coordinator, author and co-author, even as a mom!

Some things I put on my resume and others I didn't. Read more about me here.

As the world becomes increasingly more complex we need practices that nourish us. Wild Writing® has been such a practice, especially since the pandemic in 2020 and having to stay at home with my kids. The world re-opened, eventually, we got on with our lives, but not with our "normal" lives. They never became normal again, I think. And Wild Writing became part of my new normal.

Without caring about what people might think of us, the page is ours alone. Friend, confident, it doesn’t judge us. We can all write in an honest and simple way, and create absolutely beautiful stories. In fact, the more we let go of the idea of “writing well”, the better we write. The path to beauty is not through perfection.

About Wild Writing®

In our Wild Writing® practice we begin with a poem to inspire us and open the doors to our minds. Then we use timed periods to write as quickly as possible, not allowing our critical mind to jump in and block us. We just follow our intuition and all we can hear and see is one word after another and we keep saying yes to the next word and to the next. We keep digging with the pen and with some luck we strike some place inside us that has been long waiting to tell us something. Are you brave enough to hear it? Are you brave enough to share it?

Yes, after writing, we do share what we wrote. This may seem very scary at first but in time you realize it's a full part of the practice and its beauty. Especially because the group does not offer any comment or critique. We just listen to each other, we hold each other in safety, silence and appreciation. And we can learn so much with one another if we allow this openness and flow to take place.

Why 36 Words

I began Wild Writing® early in the pandemic, in 2020. A Facebook friend had posted saying she'd cancelled her Amazon Prime subscription to do a 27-day Wild Writing® challenge. I took a peak at it and having liked the idea, I accepted the challenge too. But writing so many days in a row in a time when, like so many poeople and for the obvious reasons I wasn't motivated to do much, wouldn't be easy, I knew that.

A few days later another friend - and dear mentor - also posted on Facebook, saying she had intended to write a blog post about living lockdown with a disability but since she was precisely managing those disabilities, she had only the energy to write 37 words:

This Limping Lockdown Life

Had a tough week last week.

Always wondered what would happen when unable to access therapies and swim.

False sense of security.

Crash.

Middle way denial and catastrophising.

Patience.

Be like an animal. Rest.

Watch the sky.

One of her followers wrote a comment, saying that such a shor format was a breath of fresh air in the online sea of information we were living then, and she asked if next time it could be only 36 words. She said yes and wrote:

This Limping Lockdown Life: 2

Saw the osteopath last week.

What a relief! It helped.

Even so.

The days blur into one another.

A symphony of pain and pleasure.

Sometimes I surf, sometimes I fight.

I keep looking at the sky.

This seemed to me absolutely possible! When my wiriting could really use a push, even if I didn't write anything else I could write 36 words a day! So I bought a beautiful gold-n'-black notebook and began the journey. When in 2021 I started my own writing program I named it... 36 Words ("36 palavras"). Little did I know that several years after, I'd still be filling notebooks with that simple, short format.

I'm grateful to Laurie Wagner for taking her Wild Writing® practice online in 2020, for creating the Wild Writing Family (which still grows strong in connection and Beauty) and for teaching me so much in the Teacher Training Program. And forever grateful to Vidyamala Burch for her 36 words.