Touchstone
When and where I discovered the word “Touchstone”
I can tell you when and where touchstones arrived in my life.
At fourteen, I attended a Young Writer's Workshop at Simon's Rock College of Bard. One of the assignments was to reread a piece we’d already written and to find something juicy and interesting within it. Then we use that as a jumping off point and write something new, a second piece that might be even better than the original.
The instructor was a wiry, gray-haired man who looked a bit like Gandalf. I don’t remember his name, but I remember the name of the juicy, undeveloped tidbit we were told to find in a piece we’d already written: he called it a touchstone.
As far as the actual assignment went, I didn’t really like the new piece I wrote, but I loved the word.
As someone already steeped in fantasy writing, I imagined a touchstone as a wide slab which opened at your touch to reveal a path, one you’d never seen before but you knew you were meant to follow. Forever afterwards, whenever I would search for what had charge, like a door waiting to be opened, a path waiting to be followed, I would call it a touchstone.
When and where I use touchstones
During my creative process, I also search for underdeveloped but charged tidbits. When I find a touchstone in what is already on the page, I develop it a little more in freewrites, so that the actual drafting is easier.
Even in the middle of an experience in my own life, I also search for that charge. It usually leads me to the place where I can make more meaning - a foundation of unshakable meaning that I can carry forward into the future.
Pain too can be a touchstone, waiting to be explored and understood.
Touchstones + Scartending
If you have a deep scar, that is a door, if you have an old, old story, that is a door.
If you love the sky and the water so much you almost cannot bear it, that is a door.
If you yearn for a deeper life, a full life, a sane life, that is a door.
Your emotions are trying to tell you something, especially if certain events spark the same feeling over and over again.
In psychology, this emotional pattern—where a certain external circumstance ignites a consistent emotional response—is often called “trigger.”
A “trigger” is a very specific sort of touchstone, one where an emotional snarl has enough energy to help an individual to learn something about themselves.
That self-knowledge can help them change the trajectory of a person’s story.
I call that process “scar-tending.”
Explore Further.
For more on carrying your own experiences with more strength and self-compassion, please see tender stories.
For more on re-weaving your frayed edges, please see integrate.
For more on creative elders like Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés, please see this page.