Writing What You Don't Know
Exploring the Imaginative Storm Method with James Navé and Allegra Huston
“When you have ease in storytelling, then your voice, your art emerges on its own. All you have to do is relax and watch it happen.” —James Navé
“Your body will tell you when you are writing true.” —Allegra Huston
Preview: Episode 90 Bringing Play to the Practice with James Navé & Allegra Huston
You’ve heard of brainstorming—but what happens when you storm your imagination? In this episode of Emerging Form, we explore The Imaginative Storm Method, developed by James Navé and Allegra Huston and outlined in their book Write What You Don’t Know. The premise? When we are “silly and playful” our writing can be “fresh and loose.” In this episode, they offer ways to “leave the rational mind” and engage in a more creative space, an “I-don’t-know mindset.” It’s an inspiring episode—both practical and wildly alive.
Allegra Huston and James Navé are co-founders of Imaginative Storm Writing Workshops and the publishing company Twice 5 Miles. They have been teaching multi-day and single-day writing workshops together and separately for over 20 years. For five years they taught a creativity retreat for screenwriting students at the Na- tional University of Ireland, Galway, and both have also taught for the University of Oklahoma OSLEP program.
What We’re Reading and Listening to:
Rosemerry:
What does a 16th-century Turkish Sufi have to offer us now? Something rather like the theme of this week’s episode. “The Path of Amazement” by Seyyid Seyfullah Nizamoglu may not be a complex poem, but it says everything … I’ve been finding ecstasy in reading it.
I’ve been thinking about happiness—what is it? Is it inside us? Or outside of us? How do we grow it? Where does it come from? Guiding me on this journey is May Sarton’s poem “The Work of Happiness.”
Christie:
A friend recommended the Amazon Prime tv show Jury Duty, and I binged the entire eight episode season in consecutive nights. It’s light and funny, but also sweet too. It’s a mashup of a reality show, documentary and one of those prank shows like Candid Camera. The show’s true star, a regular guy named Ronald, has been called to jury duty and offered a chance to take part in a documentary about the jury system. Except it’s not a real jury or case, and everyone else involved is an actor. Honestly, I have ethical problems with the setup, but it’s executed in a way that’s humane to Ronald, who becomes the hero of the show as the rest of the cast improvises around his reactions to their increasingly ridiculous situations. I haven’t laughed so hard in a long time. Also, I couldn’t help but feel uplifted at the knowledge that someone as genuinely kind and caring as Ronald exists.
The Risks You Take
The sun above the Sangre de Cristo Mountains brought to mind
the burner on my mother’s kitchen stove. Don’t touch that burner;
it’s hot, Mother said. The coils looked cool to my five-year-old eyes.
I pressed my palm and fingers down. My skin sizzled. I jerked
my arm back and stared at my new blisters. Over the years,
I’ve often wondered why I branded my hand instead of testing the air above the stove to gauge the heat. Most stories rise from the risks you take. If I’d done nothing but wave my hand over the coils, I’d have no story
to tell. Walking the fence is the biggest risk you’ll ever take.
*Can you list the risks you took that turned into indelible memories?
—James Navé, from 100 Days: Poems After Cancer (Three: A Taos Press, 2023)
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Two Questions:
(share your answers with us here on Substack or in our FB group)
How do you get into an I-don’t-know mindset?
What is your present relationship status with your imagination?
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