Writing as an embodied act

Julia Cameron says that writing is an embodied act.  I take it that she means that many passions are pent up in our bodies, so that, when one writes they are unleashed onto the page and thus one frees oneself to greater creativity and more writing that is less thinking than it is the release of a squirming captive.  It seems to me that a corollary to this is that if a writer is able to touch her readers, she must distance them as much as possible from their own culture without compromising the readers’ ability to actually touch the writer.  This distanciation, non-distanciation, like a one-way mirror is facilitated by a kind of creative “mapping” that happens when an author is fully descriptive of the environment.  A Kansas farm kid dreams of the ocean he has never visited and so takes up the absurd task of attempting to read one of Melville’s novels, so that he drops off to sleep with the taste of salt on his lips and dreams that the ropes burn his hands.

Comments

[Shelley]

I'm intrigued by what a reader's "culture" might be and how a reader would still be able to "touch" a writer. Is this a similar concept as Samuel Taylor Coleridge's suspension of disbelief? Disconnect just enough that you can consider something other than your reality? I have alot of questions.