There are times in every writer’s work when we dread facing the emptiness of the blank screen or page, when the words run dry, when the characters we have created turn against us, behaving in ways that we don’t understand. When we lose the thread that connects us to our unconscious creativity we can find ourselves blocked, stuck, and frustrated.
SubText Consultations offers the chance to review your work and your process with a psychotherapist who writes. Our consultants offer their professional training, expertise, and experience to help other writers get through the dry spells, move through the maze, and dig out from under the blocks that all writers regularly encounter on their journeys.
We can coach you through creating your own rituals and structures which help to deepen your writing practice and collaborate more respectfully with your own unconscious processes. We can help you harness the spontaneous creativity and archetypal imagery of your psyche through, for example, dream work, journaling, and the active imagination work of C. G. Jung. We will help you to find your voice.
Our Writer’s Clinic offers fiction writers a chance to put their characters “on the couch” and to confer with a psychotherapist about the internal, psychological continuity of a character’s life, about how environmental stressors and traumas might impact their development and relationships to other characters. We can scan for psychological continuity. We can also examine the writer’s relationship to their own characters to assist the writer in allowing themselves to understand and imagine a more fully realized living character.
We offer our services in the office individually and in writers groups for those in NYC, through video conferencing, and particularly through written consultations which allow us to engage in dialogue – creating a written record – as we use our writers’ brains together to address writing concerns.
Although our consultants are practicing psychotherapists who have worked for many years with diverse individuals, including novelists, poets, journalists, bloggers and academics, at SubText Consultations we offer ourselves in a different capacity. Bringing our life-experience as psychotherapists along with us, we look to offer consultation, coaching, and support to fellow writers in their work, through all the sticky and stuck patches.
SubText 
I asked SubTextConsultation for help in developing a character in my second novel. I had had feedback from my agent that he wasn’t quite coming together, and I had identified that I needed more insight into his upbringing and family history, across two generations, to really understand what had formed him and to help him feel consistent and ‘real’. The advice I received, which came from a fresh, psychological (rather than strictly ‘writerly’) angle, gave me a new perspective on the character, and also helped me to identify the reasons, stemming from my own background, that were blocking me from having true sympathy for him. With these insights I was able to go back to the text and tweak his scenes so that he came fully to life. The insights I had from SubTextConsultation proved invaluable, and I can’t recommend this service highly enough.
– Melissa Harrison, author of Clay (http://www.amazon.com/Clay-A-Novel-Melissa-Harrison/dp/1608199789/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1381701918&sr=8-1&keywords=clay+harrison)
Thanks Melissa, for the kind words here, and for the pleasure of collaborating with you on fresh perspectives for us both!
~ Martha
I was surprised to find a service such as Sub Text Consultations, but I’m grateful for its availability. Ms. Martha’s expert feedback helped me to better communicate and transform the familiar experience of emotional pain into a uniquely imaginative and personal creation. I now feel that I could be proud of sharing it with those who may be suffering through similar circumstances. Thank you again, Ms. Martha!
Thank you Theva! It was an honor working with you on such a personal and powerful piece, and I know there are many others out there who will feel understood by it.
I encourage anyone who is interested in the intersection of trauma work and mythical Jungian imagery to explore this piece.
All the best,
Martha
Here is a link to Theva’s work:
http://www.amazon.com/Messages-Melancholy-Madness-Theva-Buddha-ebook/dp/B00MLPGWWM/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1410787169&sr=1-1
I had the pleasure of working with Martha on a large, unruly project that felt like it was getting the best of me. It’s an animated “not-so-short” film that, essentially, is about the process of therapy… which made consulting with SubText the perfect scenario. Martha walked me through the narrative arc, helped me clarify my concepts and characters, and provided marvelous insight into both the therapy process and the storytelling process. (And how interrelated they can be!) And, bonus: The consultation helped me create an unexpected short film, which I’ve attached below. (At two minutes, it really is short.)
So grateful for this enjoyable and highly beneficial collaboration… looking forward to more in the future!
Elizabeth Honer
Cranky Muse Projects
Thanks Elizabeth!
and everyone be sure to view her wonderful short
about the how our internal editor can sabotage our perceptions of even the loveliest creations. It made me laugh out loud at my own processes too. 🙂