Figures: Stick and Otherwise

Does your writing feel like a game of hangman where each wrong word brings you one line closer to failure? This gallery offers a collection of SPACE maps themed around people: stick figures, shadows, faces, hands. Stick with your writing and you’ll see it’s joined to your body. The two cannot part. So, if you’re trying to figure out your SPACE of writing, these figures may help. Look through and ask yourself: Where is my body when I write? How do I physically experience pleasure? Can I bring that pleasure into my writing?

Jak, UK

Jak’s figure depicts a rock-climber scaling the steep cliff face of pleasurable writing. He stretches his body to reach each new handhold or foothold, climbing onwards and upwards in his writing journey. 

Grace, New Zealand

Grace’s SPACE map shows a black box hanging from the ‘S’ in SPACE: “socially connected” hasn’t found its place there yet. Below the black box, a stick figure smiles broadly, its thought-filled head nearly overwhelming its body. In the middle of the page, a “physically engaged” figure strides forward, words rising in a colourful cloud from its mouth. Is Grace heading into a new SPACE of writing?

Irene, New Zealand

‘Our bodies are our emotions,’ Irene writes, ‘and our emotions become our posture.’ Drawing from yoga, Irene postures her body towards open, enjoyable writing by becoming aware of the SPACE and place around her.

Felicity, Sweden

Felicity’s SPACE figure finds joy in the colourful “pleasure clouds” that float around her. Each cloud describes a different action to make her writing soar.

Nigel, Australia

Nigel’s SPACE map frames academic writing as art—a thing of beauty. Two figures in this picture look on. They are a shadow audience for a paper not yet written. 

Anthony, USA

The stick figures depicted in Anthony’s SPACE map sit with their laptops open at a shared table. Small lines shoot out from each figure's mouth, indicating that a lively conversation is taking space. Anthony’s SPACE of writing is collegial, collaborative, and lubricated by liquid refreshment.

Andrea, USA

Andrea’s SPACE map shows a smiling figure inside a house. The roof if formed by a ‘support network’ of ‘friends’ and ‘fun people’. The walls make room for beauty, quiet, and storytelling; beyond the house, cafes and bars beckon. The writer in the center flexes their muscles, ready to take on the world.

Jesus, USA

Jesus’s SPACE map presents a graceful figure skater demonstrating “how figure skating is like writing.” In both figure skating and writing, you must take risks, be aware of your body, “give it your voice,” and maintain a strong form. Writing, like figure skating, is an embodied practice; you can find pleasure by becoming “aware of your body in space.”

Kathleen, USA

Kathleen’s displeasure in writing is the pressure to get published. Her SPACE figure leaps towards risk, diving into rather than away from her fears. 

Anne, Australia

Like Anthony,’s Anne’s SPACE map focuses on the social pleasures of writing. However, her image depicts just one person, a lone pied piper marching towards an empty field, calling writing companions to follow. Social writing calls for both social immersion and solitude. 

Dominic, UK

Dominic’s SPACE figure is trapped in a prison of writing. He escapes, not by destroying the walls, but by ‘knocking down the barriers’ of his writing practice to transform the prison into a path forward.

Kirsten, USA

Kirsten’s SPACE map follows the outline of her hand, with each finger reflecting a different SPACE principle. The thumb offers the moment of epiphany: ‘I get it! Thumbs up! It’s a go! Relief!’.

Main image credit: Anthony, USA