In the days of knights and castles, using a sally port was an offensive strategy to strike at an invading army during a siege. A wall protecting the city had an inner gate, which was fronted by an outer gate. This allowed a portion of the army to come and go or to “Sally Forth” engaging attackers without putting the city at risk.
“Sally Forth” has since come to mean venturing out and taking a risk in a more general sense. As writers it’s important to venture outside of our comfort zone. That can be challenging especially if we are just getting our feet wet. It’s hard enough to get a handle on the process of writing, let alone breaking out into new territory altogether. We are, after all, trying to find familiar ground where we can learn to use our voice.
Venturing into new genres is a strategic way to sally forth. It’s possible to hold the strength of our own “city,” while venturing out at the same time. Keeping our energy within our chosen genre for the projects we deem most precious to us doesn’t mean we can’t venture into some experimentation with other genres with the same project or other less significant projects that may not be on the front burner. Our novella may become an essay, our essay may become a poem and our poem may even become a haiku. The converse may be true. We may want to let one of our poems flourish into a full-blown story. Or we may move our story from nonfiction to fantasy.
An even more courageous expression of sallying forth is to risk communicating an experience so profound that it has the potential to come off as a cliché. Last week’s post was about calling up different types of memory as a tool for our writing, ancient memory or archetypal memory being one of those types. The archetypal theme of homecoming is a common one. There’s always a chance of overuse, but that is precisely because of its universal nature. When the story that you want to tell, that you must tell, say, coming home, becomes unshakable and you begin to write, it then becomes virgin territory to you. It’s like becoming a new parent. You think surely no one has ever given birth to such a beautiful human being and that this experience of falling in love so deeply with this little person is unique to you alone.
When I wrote my coming home story, it didn’t seem archetypal to me. It seemed surprisingly fresh, like unchartered territory, so groundbreaking as to be almost out of reach. The desire to find voice for what I was living into was all consuming – and yet the risk of being read by a yawning audience being put to sleep by what they perceived as blah, blah, blah was real. I had to find the courage to take a risk.
Those who sally forth are demonstrating a measure of valor. The qualities of valor are the very qualities necessary for our development as writers; tenacity, fortitude, grit, backbone and even spunk. “Sally forth,” is one of those idioms that has many layers; historical layers, artistic layers, emotional layers for personal exploration. All of these and more are potential tools for developing our writing experience.
The month of May has been dedicated to exploring idioms. Adding idioms to our writer’s toolkit opens possibilities for creative ways to add color to our writing and to grab readers’ attention. An idiom, like “Short Shrift,” or “Rings a Bell,” is a form of figurative language that may have, in its original use, had a literal meaning, but has transfigured into something akin to metaphor. This is one of the reasons idioms have built-in intrigue. And besides they’re just fun to use.
Wikipedia explains that “spill the beans” originally referred to the ancient method of putting beans into a jar to count votes in a democratic voting process. If they spilled, the secret of the winner would be revealed.
Which of the following idioms spark your interest?
· Inch along
· Two peas in a pod
· Piping hot
· Feeling one’s oats
· Hopping mad
· Biting off more than you can chew
· Adding insult to injury
· Razor’s edge
Writing Prompt For the Week: Venture Out
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