Writing (With) the Body: How to Let Pain Into the Work Without Letting It Take Over
Pain slows time. Sometimes all we can do is slow down with it. Prompts and exercises to create within illness.
Yesterday, I wrote about how illness can become the content of our creative work, whether or not we consciously invite it in. Today I wanted to offer a small collection of practices, prompts, and ideas for those of you who are creating from inside the mess, the pain, the waiting room, or the spiral.
This is not about pushing through. It’s not about overcoming. It’s about being where you are and listening a little bit differently.
Begin Where the Body Is
The Three-Sentence Body Check
Before you write, make or move, pause. Close your eyes. Ask your body how it is and answer in three sensory sentences. They don’t have to be poetic or original. They just have to be true.
Example:
My ribs feel like they’re holding their breath.
There’s a heat behind my eyes I don’t want to name.
My feet want to move, but not forward.
Use those three sentences as a warm-up, or as material. They might shape your voice for the day, your imagery, or even your plot if you’re working in fiction. The point is not to write about the body, but with it.
Let the Pain Stay Unnamed
On the other hand, sometimes trying to name what hurts shuts the process down. So don’t. Let it stay abstract, atmospheric, ambient.
Prompt: Describe your pain without using any medical or emotional words. Use weather. Use color. Use sound.
Examples:
It’s a bruise in a hallway with no light.
It sounds like a faucet dripping in a house where no one lives anymore.
It’s the color of spoiled cream.
This works whether you’re journaling or writing a poem or painting or working on a novel. The language doesn’t need to be diagnostic. It doesn’t need to be poetic. It just needs to be what’s right for you today.
Don’t Wait for the Big Story
Exercise: The Small Moment Archive
One of the biggest myths that gets in our way is the idea that pain must become some cohesive narrative in order to matter. It doesn’t.
Write (or voice note or sketch or whatever medium works for you) about one moment where your health impacted your experience in a way you didn’t expect. No context. No wrap-up, no neat tie-it-in-a-bow-before-sharing. Just the moment.
Examples:
I kept painting the same face but the mouth disappeared every time.
I stared at a blank page for four hours and decided that was writing.
I edited out every line that used the word “I.”
I crocheted until my fingers went numb and then kept going because I needed the motion more than the result.
I sketched a hospital bed without realizing it until three days later.
I tried to write a poem and instead made a grocery list and cried because they felt the same.
I wrote one sentence and then spent an hour rearranging the furniture.
I drew a forest but left out all the paths.
Collect these moments. One per day maybe. Let them pile up. One of them might become something later. Or they might simply be a record that you were here, feeling something.
Write From the Middle
You don’t need to wait until you’re “better” to write. You don’t need to figure it all out first. You don’t even need to know what you’re writing about. Some of the most honest creative work begins mid-symptom, mid-question, mid-recovery.
Prompt: Write from the voice of someone who is still inside it. Not the future you, not the healed you. Just the now-you. Let the piece end in a question instead of a conclusion.
You can start with:
I’m not sure yet if...
Today I only know this much...
If there’s a way out of this, maybe it looks like...
Let the piece stay unfinished. Let it end in breath.
Honor What You Don’t Share
Not everything has to be made public. Not everything has to be processed through an audience. The fact that you create something while in pain does not mean you owe it to the world.
So make something you don’t plan to show anyone. Ever. Let it be secret, private, maybe even a little incoherent.
This, too, is practice. This, too, is valuable.
Reframe “Productivity”
Some days, the only creative act you might manage is noticing something and remembering it. That is enough. That counts.
Mini-practice: Choose one thing per day to witness fully. That’s it. A cracked plate. The way your hands shake. A line from a show that won’t leave you. Write it down. Don’t explain.
Pain slows time. Sometimes all we can do is slow down with it.
You’re Already Making Something
Whether you’re writing every day or haven’t touched your notebook in months, whether your work is fluid or fragmented or barely forming, whether you’re in remission or relapse or just exhausted from the effort of trying to be okay, please know that the work is still there. The story is still yours. The art does not expire just because it isn’t finished.
Pain might be in the room with you. That doesn’t mean it gets the last word. But it may deserve to speak. It may need to speak. So let it speak.
Let yourself create in the language you need today. And if that language doesn’t make sense to anyone else yet, that’s okay. It still counts.
If you read this far, perhaps you liked my work. It takes work. Support it if you can.
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Thank you to
, and (with Dr. Bailey Lane) for being inspiring.
This is brilliant! I've been thinking recently about how we always want to write from the ending - from a place where we've found healing or recovery or closure - and so we either pretend we're all good now or don't write at all. But life is rarely like that, which also means that's not relatable. Some of the most beautiful work comes from the middle of it all.