When Words Aren’t Enough: How Art Therapy Helped Me Craft More Resonant Stories

When I first entered art therapy, I was in the throes of editing a middle-grade novel about Lola, a 13-year-old girl navigating the loss of her twin sister. Her grief wasn’t landing on the page the way I needed it to. It felt muted, distant, too clean. With several close family members recently diagnosed with grim illnesses, grief had become a part of my daily life, so I unconsciously distanced myself from Lola’s pain. This blocked her from developing into a full-fledged, multi-dimensional character. 

I am not an artist. In my eyes, all my attempts at art-making were ugly failures. But this art therapist came highly recommended, and I needed immediate support. My hope was to be able to talk first, and attempt art later, if at all. Even better, maybe we’d just look at art, not try to make it.

So, on the first day, when she put a giant blank canvas on an easel in front of me and told me to cover it with paint, I started questioning why I was there. No rules? No instructions? Just paint the entire thing? I froze, paralyzed by anticipated embarrassment. What color? Which paintbrush? What’s the right way to begin? And why would she trust me with a real, professional’s canvas when I’d just muck it up?

But she didn’t give me answers. And somehow, that was the answer.

At first, I made awkward, abstract marks—primal dashes of green, aqua, and brown. I second-guessed everything. Plus, it was messy. But soldiering on always got me through big challenges, so surely it would get me through a battle with this uncooperative, rectangular piece of nothingness. One day, I glued colored tissue paper over everything. The next session, I scraped off some of it, revealing little windows of… surprise? But what was the big reveal? This layered ritual made no sense.

With time, I admit the mystery hooked me. But I’d sought out therapy to deal with grief, and I didn’t see the healing capacity of brush strokes. My therapist suggested I let go of my “whys” and turn the canvas upside down and sideways to see what images emerged, then allow them to speak to me. An owl appeared one day. Next, a light being, and then a boat. The owl transformed into a lion, and that lion answered my questions, much like the conversations I had with characters in my books. I recorded the conversations with the images in a journal.

And finally…a gift appeared: A new breed of words tumbled out as if a gate had swung open, and I gained access to a different, much more meaningful world. I’d stopped intellectualizing and started paying attention, allowing my images to shapeshift on their own and speak to me on a soul level.

The more I painted, pasted, and cut without knowing what I was creating, I not only gained tools for my own healing, but gained access to what Lola’s story was really about. I didn’t receive plot points from my art therapy sessions, I got feelings. Sometimes they were messy and uncomfortable, but they had color, weight, and texture. By painting into my personal grief, I accessed feelings that carried me beneath what the story appeared to be, and into the places where the real story lived––both my story and Lola’s.

Art didn’t give me direction. It gave me permission to make a mess, to not know, to cover up something that seemed “good” only to discover something more honest emerging. Art gave me permission to scrape away into deep, dark recesses, to literally touch the pulse of a story. It slowed me down and taught me to sit with discomfort, ambiguity, and emotional layers that don’t reveal themselves all at once. All that not only changed how I wrote Lola, but it also changed my overall writing process going forward.

My art might not be beautiful, but it’s honest, exactly what I want my novels to be. Kids can sniff out a fake from miles away. They need to read and discuss hard truths because they live them every day. Learning to read the language of art helped me mine these hard truths and then soften their edges in order to translate them into engaging, hopeful stories for children.

A writer doesn’t have to be a visual artist to benefit from making art. When I stopped treating art-making (and writing) like something precious, like something that might fall apart if I handled it wrong, I became aware of its inherent life force, a reciprocal give and take regardless of its perceived “beauty.” I don’t need to know exactly what the end product will be, but if I stay in conversation with it, it’ll show me the way.

So, if you’re stuck in your story, I urge you to try something different. Flip your process upside down and sideways. Rip up a draft and make a collage. What do those shuffled, ragged-edged words say to you now? Paint over a journal entry and see what peeks through. Does the pink paragraph dispute with the blue? Let your hands move without your brain calling all the shots. Your work might not get prettier, but it might get braver. And the honesty in your story might be exactly what a struggling kid needs.

Now that would be a masterpiece.