Enneagram: An Author's Roadmap Back to Creativity by Eleri Grace

 

A familiar theme in many of our blogs is coping with the weight of anxiety, exhaustion, and fear that permeates our daily lives in these extraordinary times. Last December, I doubt many of us could imagine we would find the September prompt of “Hope” to be so challenging. As I’ve alluded in several of my blogs this year, I’ve found it very difficult to tap into my creative well of late. In using last month’s post as a template, I see that I made a brash pronouncement that I was committing to meeting 1,000 words a day on my next novel. <insert maniacal laughter> But I also, it should be said, gave myself permission to allow the next story to bloom at its own pace. And while I don’t have 30,000 words in the manuscript, I am now going to circle back to our hope theme for the month, for what I do have to show for last month’s work is a roadmap of hope and redemption for my characters -- and perhaps myself.

            I have long been interested in the Myers-Briggs personality typing and have called on it to help flesh out my heroes and heroines. I use it, along with Holland codes and similar career exploration tests, in my college consulting business. So despite already being a bit of a Personality Junkie (a dangerous thing perhaps with no background in psychology!), I hadn’t used Enneagram at all. Each time I looked at it, I grew flustered with trying to settle on one primary Enneagram type. I got different results with every online test I took: one even gave me 98% each on 3 different types! But a conversation with a family member last month sparked me to explore it more. 

            After devoting no small amount of time to studying it and its more advanced principles of interaction and growth (wings, instinctual subtypes, tritypes, stress and growth lines) this month, I am fascinated. Fascinated and full of optimism – and dare I say hope -- for how to put it to work in my novels to create full and vibrant emotional journeys for my characters. Enneagram is a tool for personal growth and for expanding how one interacts with others, but it also provides the perfect tools for authors who might want to anticipate (plot!) and understand how characters will respond to conflict and how they can authentically achieve the growth necessary to reach their healthiest emotional state -- how to live their best life in other words. The historical details for my novels always come easily, but creating the internal journey for each character has always been more difficult for me. I think I've finally found the best tool to allow me to more easily approach that part of the process. 

            I created Pinterest boards for Enneagram and MBTI and was able to use my pinned resources to plot a solid emotional arc for both my hero and heroine (of course, I will confess it took many days of rumination for me to settle on their primary type, wing, and tritype -- ha!). So I am, after all, full of renewed hope in my creative path for the coming months.

            Anticipating the question: I am a Type 9 (the Peacemaker), with Wing 1 (so 9w1), and my Tritype is 9-5-4 (Peacemaker – Investigator – Individualist). The Tritype, incidentally, was the discovery that helped me the most, as it was one explanation for why I had such a tough time settling on a primary type. As an introverted bookworm with an analytical bent, I have strong Type 5 attributes. My primary type is, however, the peaceful and calm Type 9. 

I hope this inspires our authors to consider Enneagram, MBTI or other fun personality tests as part of the character development process, and for all of us -- readers and authors alike -- it can be an insightful tool for personal development and growth.  Stay healthy and HOPEFUL!