personality type and the written word
This page was inspired by the "Art and Personality" Gallery. Thinking about art and type, and being involved in various kinds of writing myself, I found myself wondering about the relationship between writing and type. As with the Art Gallery, our aim is to explore the link, if any, between type and writing, and its implications. Here you will find four short pieces of writing by people who are not necessarily professional writers, and our invitation to you is, as with the Art page, to send in your guess as to the writer's enneagram and MBTI types.
For future issues, you are invited to send in short pieces of your own
writing for inclusion on this page for people to "guess" and speculate
about. These need not be poems or other "creative" pieces, though these
are very welcome and need not be "literary" or professionally written.
Book or movie reports, "how-to" pieces, argumentative articles, essays,
even advertising copy--all would be very welcome and would provide rich
food for speculation and discussion about the possible links between type
and writing.
A number of fascinating questions present themselves when considering
writing and type. The first is whether it is even possible to identify a
person's type through a piece of writing. This becomes especially evident
when considering the writings of professional writers, who may have
learned to write what is required for a particular audience. And with
creative writings like short stories and novels, the "type" may reflect
not the author him/herself so much as the author's message about a
character or a particular set of values.
There is an even larger question, of course, of whether any given piece of
writing can adequately reflect an individual's type. What do we look for
in a piece of writing that might indicate type? Which is more important,
style or content? Can different pieces of writing by the one author give
the impression that they are written by different types? Would it be
possible to discern true type when a piece has been written outside of the
writer's usual type style? Is it possible for a writer of a given
enneagram type to produce writing that exudes the feel of quite another
type? We hope that eventually this site will stimulate the discussion of
issues such as these.
Finally, another area of inquiry which may come up in discussion is the
relationship of a writer’s MBTI type to his/her enneagram type. Perhaps
some of the theories and ideas presented as papers in this Journal will be
supported or refuted by what we learn about writers and their
MBTI/enneagram types.
As with the Art Gallery, below each work is a “button” which reveals a
statement by each of the writers. Hopefully, in clarifying the intentions
and creative process of each piece (even if it is not a "creative" piece
as such), these statements will contribute towards a discussion of the
questions raised before about typing writers. Please send in not only your
guesses, but any comments or observations you may have about the pieces or
the writers' statements. We hope this page will lead to some interesting
questions about the nature of writing, creativity and type!
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Mermaid's Song
I didn't explain myself that well,
I never do.
What I really meant was
That I want to live
And that I'd die with you.
I'm sorry if I broke your heart,
It hurt me too.
They say seduction is an art
And art takes pain
To make it true.
I wish that I could make you understand
Why I must go.
I wish that I could take you by the hand
And bring you with me,
But I know
You wouldn't like it there in my home
Undersea.
You'd hate the salt, the sand, the wild sea foam
And in the end, you know, you'd wind up
Hating me.
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Sky Child
I'll take you in the morning, child,
Through the fleecy mists, mute and mild;
And hurry you hither on dawn's golden sleighs
Molded from the waiting, gilded haze;
And guide you, gliding, up spired cloud stairs
To whipped cream turrets, a singing blueness where
The sun brushes you gently with her flaxen hair -
Up high and away, until the siren blare,
Of workaday whirrings , the brash neon glare
Dwindle to forgotten in the high magic air.
The Flu Defense
(or: Why I Can't Go Visiting on Thanksgiving Eve)
I haven't been pleasing
Anyone with this sneezing;
With my sniffles and cough,
They pray I'd be off;
When I gulp Aspirin and pout,
They snap "Cut it out!
While your fever's ragin'
You're just a walking contagion,
A plague on this house -
So, don't moan and grouse,
You ravenous, flu-bitten mouse!"
Oh, if the flu could fly
To realms high and dry
And choke in that heat, or tie
Its own limbs in knots - Why,
Yes, if the flu really flew,
Kindly let me be through
With the sniffles, then I
Might be able to visit you........
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Sport
She senses the danger before hearing them. Starting her flight at
dawn, she leaves the warmth and security of her den, realizing that this time
she can't just outrun them as she has done so many times in the past. Now
she must divert them from the hidden treasure in her lair, her four pups
born barely three weeks ago. Having cautioned them about the hunters she
knows they're now old enough to remain silent.
Four miles away the men with their guns, horses and dogs were but
gathering on this cold Carolina morning. Men and dogs alike excited at
the prospect of this bloodsport.
She's a small red fox and has known security, love, joy and fear in
her short life. Now she must be cunning.
Instinctually she runs toward them, and seeing them, becomes still
on the top of a small grassy slope. The lead hound sighting her, begins
giving chase. The pack on his heels. The men unaccustomed to such a quick
scent are busy trying to control the dogs and horses, not yet understanding that the prey has been sighted. When all realize the fox is there, but a half
mile away, the chase begins. Dogs taking the lead, men and horses close
behind, while unbeknownst to all the fox runs perpendicular from her den.
She puts perhaps five miles between them and her pups, knowing that her
need to protect her progeny has put her in grave danger. If she'd stayed
they might have missed them, having been confused by another scent. Or,
becoming excited at their find, she could have easily slipped out and run
a mile or so before the dogs were stopped by the hunters in midst of
their slaughter; then diverted to her trail already growing cold.
But even through her terror at hearing them so close, she knows that
her purpose is to protect her young at any cost.
Soon they're close enough to feel their hot breath in the air. Even
then she knows she could lose them, but then they might backtrack and
find the den. So she runs toward a small stand of Mimosa trees, fronting
the cliff overlooking the river. Surrounding her, eyes blood red, pace
slowed, they begin to close in. As the lead hound reaches her, fangs
penetrating flesh, he gracefully flips her into the air, breaking her
neck. The body falling quietly to the ground; astounding the rest of the
pack into a moment of silence. The hunters arriving at this deathly moment,
contain their dogs. One man advances forward to claim his prize. Soon
posing with his trophy and a few dogs for a photograph to save this scene
for posterity.
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Joey and Lisa Go Fishing
Joey and Lisa were in love: not a grey mundane love with
its daily grind of compromise and boredom interleaved with
summer-lightning flashes of passion and rage and muddy dark valleys of
fear and depression, but the kind you see on soap operas. The kind
which lasts until the Universe itself ends; until history winds down;
until...
"Ah, shit, I can't write this muck any more!" muttered Joey, slamming
the lid down on his PowerBook. He stared moodily out over the bay,
where Lisa was still out working. Real work, not just wringing crap out
of a keyboard. Catching real fish for real people to eat. He could see
her in his mind's eye, salting the skate down, packing it in barrels,
hauling the barrels down to the hold. A phrase from the sea-chanty he'd
written for her flickered through his mind: "Roll'er skates down the
hold, me boyos!"
"Time for more crap", he sighed, re-opening his laptop. He gloomed at
the screen for a while, tinkering with the words, deleting, cutting, pasting,
dragging and dropping. Switching from normal view to outline view to page
layout view. Popping in and out of the thesaurus, checking the spelling again and again. Still the words refused to come to life. That's the way it
always was with crap - it just lay there and looked... crappy. Why did he
ever think to be a writer; he'd never guessed how lonely it would be. "Screw it; maybe tomorrow." He quit the word processor, stabbing his mouse spitefully at
the "Don't Save" button. Fired up Eudora. Maybe something from his
cyberlove awaited. No, nothing in the mailbox. He'd never met Sai Lin,
but she (was she even a "she"?) seemed to know him better even than
Lisa. Sai Lin, warm yet direct; Sai Lin, marathon runner. "How's your
hip today?", he typed. Sai Lin's hip, slowly disintegrating, a legacy
of too many runs for too many kilometres. He reread his words,
consigned them to the wires with the "Send" button. Sighed again.
He stared at the screen until it grew blurry. His mind wandered. Again. He
replayed the last argument with Lisa. They'd introduced new technology
into the fleet: bigger nets that needed two chutes to drop down into
the sea; bigger nets, bigger catches. But the skate catch was dropping
every year, he'd protested. The fleet would just wipe them out quicker
now. Lisa had seemed oblivious, the prospect of extra dollars dancing
in her eyes. "With a pair a' chutes, we'll double our catch, double our
money. The fish'll breed up like they always do. As soon as the water
warms up a bit, you'll see."
The goddam fish could do with a good feed, he mused. Conjured up a black
rage that appeared from a clear sky, drowning the boats, the fish
congregating to browse on the bounty from above. He closed his PowerBook
again and walked into the sudden howling storm outside.
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