I don’t know about you but I’d never really thought about hospitality in relation to writing until I got an invitation from Rosa Say to take part in this month’s writing fest at her Talking Story blog. Rosa is a hospitable writer and blog author extraordinaire. She has also introduced me to the amazing world of Hawaiian values and inspired an on-going project of mine to see how we can build the spirit of aloha into our writing.
Her invitation took me through the waters of writing to make your reader feel at home and then into a deeper exploration of the Hawaiian concept of ho’okipa. The simple ‘translation’ into English is hospitality but I have realised through the research I did for the essay that it means so much more than that. (And the joy of taking part in a learning forum like Rosa’s is that you can keep on finding out more as you go along.) It also means:
- respect for the dignity of other people
- generosity
- a sustaining environment
I ended up with the conclusion that writing with ho’okipa meant writing with respect for yourself (as writer), for your reader, and for the shared space that you create between you.
I hope that you’ll check out my piece at Talking Story and I’d encourage you to dip into the other essays too – plus the comments that follow of course. There are lots of ideas there about ways that we can build hospitality into our personal and professional lives – including our writing.
To get future articles you might want to subscribe to the free RSS feed. You'll find more writing tips in the Confident Writing archive. Thanks for visiting!
Related posts:
{ 1 trackback }
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
Make Sunday your Day to Comment
If Sunday commenting became your new practice, you would learn and gain much enrichment from our month within hospitality (called Ho‘okipa here). Consider the two-way, flowing nature of hospitality; someone welcomes you in, and you as their guest have …