Weekly Writing Boost #4: Hierophany
Weekly Writing Boost #4: Hierophany
Otherwise known as finding the divine in the every day
Demystifying the art and craft of fiction writing with tips on creating a satisfying, consistent writing practice from a novelist, book coach and workshop leader.
Hierophany
This week’s writing boost is based on a new word I learned this week: hierophany. (Pronounced hi-RAH-funny. Ish. That’s the closest I can write it out.) Hierophany means, essentially, finding the divine in the every day, a most excellent practice for writers. (Don’t get nervous about the word divine if you are not a religious type. Think of the word in its informal meaning as “excellent or delightful.”) But before we dive into that practice and this week’s boost, some background.
A story
Yesterday, I was slated to lead a book discussion on zoom for the University program in which I teach. Alas, nobody who had signed up showed up, although I did have a lovely conversation with my co-leader, another MTSU mentor. And I did glean a cool bit of information from the book we were going to discuss.
The book is Enchantment, by Katherine Mays (she of Wintering fame, the book that became quite popular during the pandemic). True confession, when first I started reading, I hated disliked the book. I have little patience for abstract pronouncements, much preferring ideas rooted in the concrete, and especially, story. And at the beginning of the book I thought Mays was going way abstract. But as I kept reading, I enjoyed the book more and more and found much to recommend. I loved her stories about the Leonid meteor shower on November 13, 1833, which was so dense with shooting stars it was as if the sky were on fire. And I enjoyed the story about the folly (in the sense of a building with no practical purpose) for which she searched for in the countryside around her home. And then found only when she believed enough to see it. (get exact quote.
Unpacking
There are a couple of things I want to unpack here. First my bias toward writing firmly rooted in story. Stories engage me. Stories energize me. Stories make me think, I’ve felt that way, too, or yeah, that’s happened to me. Stories create an emotional connection in me and allow me to emphasize with the character, real or fictional, who is telling the tale. Whereas abstraction (ideas not tied to something concrete, in my admittedly simple definition) make me shrug and move onto something else. Stories are what we fiction writers write, of course, but I also submit that they are why we write. We write to achieve that connection, that feeling that we’ve been there, a bit of shared humanity that lifts us for a sweet moment.
And second that whole bit about finding the folly I mentioned above. “Quite suddenly we found that we could see it. We had to believe in it enough first.” That’s true for us writers, too. Before we can make a satisfying career in writing, or even simply a satisfying writing practice, we have to believe in ourselves enough to see it. To begin it. To carry on with it, through the ups and downs and joys and discouragement that inevitable comes. We have to believe, plain and simple.
Hierophany.2
Now back to the word that started this all. Hierophany is defined as a physical manifestation of the divine and the word was coined by Mercia Eliade, who was apparently a Renaissance type of guy. He was a Romanian historian, a philosopher, a fiction writer, and a professor at the University of Chicago. Katherine Mays says:
“hierophany is the experience of perceiving all the layers of existence, not just seeing its surface appearance. The person who believes, be it in an ancient animism or a complex modern religion, lives in an enchanted world, having been given a kind of supernatural key to see wonder in the everyday.”
I mean, isn’t that what we writers at our best do? Sometimes writing feels supernatural to me, in the sense that the words are coming from some kind of source beyond me. And digging beneath the layer of surface appearances is what fiction does at its best, for sure. So I believe hierophany is something to cultivate.
The Boost
—First, take a piece of paper or open a file and divide it into five columns. Label each column with one of the senses, sight, sound, touch, smell, taste.
—Stop, look, and listen. At your next writing session be still for a few minutes and observe the dailiness that surrounds you. (You can sit at your usual writing space or for bonus points, go outside to do this.) Notice the things you see, hear, smell and feel.
—Make a list in each column of what you’ve noticed.
—Set a timer for 5-10 minutes, choose one of the senses and write about everything you noticed. It might help you to write about it realistically (just the facts, ma’am), abstractly (general concept not rooted in the concrete) or metaphorically (compare to something different). Rinse and repeat for each sense.
This makes a great warm-up exercise. Take ten minutes before your writing session, choose one sense and write. Then segue into the rest of your writing day.
Resources
Mays has a blog here on Substack. You can find that here. But please don’t tell her I didn’t like the book at first!
Enchantment, the book, available on Amazon or Bookshop.
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