Four Words To Write By

There are a lot of inspirational quotes out there. Every writer has something stuck up somewhere which they look at when they need a kick in the rear end. And as much as I love motivational quotes, the type that make you feel all fuzzy and warm inside, today I'm going to share with you the only four words I have near where I write.

These came from Ray Bradbury's Zen and the Art of Writing, and they are three simple concepts in four words:

Work.

Relaxation.

Don't Think.

Let that sink in for a moment. 

Work. If you want to be a writer, especially a prolific writer, you need to realise that you are going to have to consider it work. You can't just wait for inspiration to strike, you have to sit down and keep going until it does.

Relaxation. But that doesn't mean writing should be a stress. It is your relaxation time, your time to let your mind run free as your fingers tap dance to keep up.  Take a deep breath and smile to yourself, because whether you feel it or not, you are doing what you love most in the world.

And finally, Don't Think. Don't try to analyse what you are doing, what is about to happen, how you are writing, what your audience will think of it, etc. That can all come later. Right now, in this moment, just let your creative youth take over and let go of your critic. 

At first I wasn't convinced of the power of these four words, but stuck them up on individual cue cards anyway. And every time I see them, I take a deep breath, smile to myself, and let my brain drift off.... oh, sorry. 

So, what words work for you? 

Twisting Metal: Fighting Your Subconscious.

 

I have finally identified one of the causes of why I've suddenly slowed down in my writing so much.

All of November I've been working on the same story, just trying to get to 50,000 words, and admittedly I was sick in there for a few days so didn't write anything. However, there were hours and hours where I was at my computer, working away, strive and struggling, and after an hour I would look at it would be 500 words, or 800 words. Where, oh where were the days of 2,000+ words an hour? Why had my muse abandoned me? 

And the writing was painful, not just slow, but every sentence I wrote I would delete and try again, it was like trying to straighten out a flat piece of metal that just kept trying to curl. I would tell myself 'No, that's not what that character sounds like, she should be feeling this right now'. And so re-write. 

Now when I say it like that, does the problem seem obvious? Well, it wasn't obvious to me until last night when walking home from church I was throwing a little tantrum saying I didn't want to do it if it was going to be so hard. 

I then just got the image: what if my subconscious was trying to write a flat piece of narrative, but I was constantly getting in the way trying to twist the metal to match my views on what the character should be?

So fine, I said, you win little subconscious, I'm going to go home, get my laptop, and just sit down and write whatever you want to come out with. I won't stop you at all. You just have fun in your own little way, and I'll be the good little typist. 

Well, it took a bit to stop my elder getting in the way and just let my youth mixed with my muse and genius jump right in. I found myself deleting a sentence thinking 'that will never work' and then I made myself stop and retype it and give my inner child a chance to explain why they had done that.

And in 15 minutes I had more than I had written in an hour that morning. By the end of an hour and a bit I had written over 3,000 words. 

So tonight I tried the same thing. I got home from work having worked overtime, with my head a bit dead, so I downloaded a mediation/relaxation app on my phone and did 20mins relaxation. Don't know if it helped, but it didn't seem to hurt it.

I then opened up a blank document, closed my eyes and went for it. Annoyingly, to me at least, I ended up re-writing a whole lot of scenes that I had painstakingly knocked out previously. But after 2 hours I had 5,500 words, and they were better words than the ones I had drawn forth from my body like I was pulling out my own intestines. 

I then went through and replaced all the scenes, and as I took out about 3,000 words, I sort of don't feel I'm much ahead in the word count. But the scenes themselves are much better. Though the characters and their interactions are not what I thought! 

This type of writing is so much more relaxing, enjoyable, encouraging than what I had been doing for the rest of the month. At the end I feel refreshed, and curious to see what will happen next. So, just keep reminding yourself:

I'm just the typist, and my subconscious is the one digging for gold.

Thanks Anne Lamott. 

 

Awakening Your Genius

So far I have talked about finding your muse as well as working with  your creative youth and judgemental elder. Now it is time to look at you genius and how to put it all together. 

For some writers, I suspect Stephen King based on his discussion in 'On Writing', your muse and your genius are the same thing. It is the part inside of you that is totally beyond your control but brings the goods.

This is not how I'm going to classify these terms. As defined in Buffyworld (Buffyworld is a phenomenon my brother Dave noted many years ago, and it is a very great place to live, though I am not sure what it would be like if other people lived there too, that might just be scary):

Your Muse: is perceived as something external to you that inspires you to write. It might turn up the ideas, or perhaps just the passion for the task.

Your Creative Youth: this concept was developed for me by Dorothea Brande, and describes that creative spirit that is overflowing with ideas and cares not for order and structure, just for creation and freedom. She termed it as part of your unconscious. However, while it is harder to control and does need you to let go of the reigns to fully function, I think it is not quite at the level of the unconscious. Using more pop-psychology, I am starting to think of it as my Right Brain working.

Your Judgmental Elder: this was summarised by Dorothea as your conscious analytical mind. Very useful in the editing stages, and in the general process of getting you to sit down and write even if you don't feel like it. I think this can be viewed as you Left Brain nature, the logical and ordered aspect of your personality. Not so strong in a lot of 'artistic' souls, but can be cultivated and is very necessary for actually producing an end result.

And then there is Your Genius.

This I believe operates at the real subconscious level. It is involved in that moment where the brilliant solution just suddenly appears fully formed in your mind. It sits there and gobbles away at your problems, and given time and opportunity, it will spit back to you an answer.

Now, Dorothea argues that she believes absolutely everyone has some genius in them, some more than others and some are better at accessing and utilising theirs, but still everyone has one. It is a very nice thought, and idealistically I would like to say I agreed. Unfortunately, I know too many people. In reality there are a few people you just meet and think: wow, you have no spark in you whatsoever, do you? Which is nasty, possibly, though often they do not care and think spark is something to be avoided. Is it mean if it's only an insult in your perception? Well, I suppose so, because my intent is still to think less of them. But it does not change the fact that I do believe that most people have a spark of genius, and a very select few might have originally had it, but something horrible in their childhoods, maybe a great aunt with a love of cats and a hatred of little boys, killed that spark.

Given that premise, if you are reading this blog, and have got this far down the page, you are probably interested in writing, and therefore most likely has some spark within you. So, let us work under the happy belief that if you are reading this, you have some genius.

Therefore, the goal must be to utilise this as much as possible. Clearly, the more 'Aha!' moments you have, a) the more exciting your writing will be for you, b) the more exciting it will be fore your reader and c) the less conscious effort you will have to put into trying to be clever. All these are very desirable things.

So how do you get your genius to come to the party? Dorothea presents facilitation of genius in the following formula:

X is to Mind as Mind is to Body, where X is Genius.

Her argument is that to fully engage your mind (youth or elder) you need to still down the demands your body make on your thinking. Either by being completely still or occupied in some routine task such as walking, knitting, chewing etc., gives your mind a chance to focus on the story. I have mentioned her suggestion of wordlessness. In the chapter on genius she brings up two other requirements for the mind to function at its best: rythmical, monotonous.

That is your secret formula for getting the most out of your mind: spend some time in rhythmical, monotonous, wordless motion and your mind can breathe and think. This is useful information and is helping me to rework my 'wordless' time. I recommend some time looking at your pre-writing activities to make sure they fit these concepts.

So, as putting your body onto autopilot helps your mind to think, Dorothea argues that putting your mind onto autopilot allows your genius to take over for a bit. This is supported by the number of times I get great ideas after sleep, or in the shower. The hot water lulls my mind into a semi coma and bam! great solution to my plot problems appears. (No, I do not then jump out and run down the street yelling Eureka. Stop picturing me naked.)

This then leads to the question of how to consciously quieten your mind without having to go to sleep or run up huge hot water bills (especially since my hot water runs out super quickly. Cold shower, not as effective, let me tell you). The key appears to be practicing meditation. Not weird, wacko, leave your body or follow your spirit guide meditation, but the practice of slowing your thoughts down and trying to stay focused on a single thing.

Like a lot of my discoveries, this is something I've felt God has been telling me to do for ages. I started off with scripture memorisation because it forced my mind to be still and focus on only one thing. At the beginning of this year I then tried to move onto meditation, trying to still my mind and focus only on God. Of course, being human, I then didn't really see the point, so did it sporadically until I had basically lost the ability and the sense that I was supposed to keep my mind from wandering. See what God has to work with?

Dorothea describes steps to developing meditation which are reasonably similar to this in practice, though content of course is different.

First she suggests just a simple test; to try to hold your mind as still as your body.

So, right now, close your eyes and try to hold your mind as still as you can, even if for only a few seconds.

How did you go? If this was easy for you, great. If you were not so successful, then that is a useful skill to develop in aid of your writing.

'The best practice is to repeat this procedure once a day for several days. Simply close your eyes with the idea of holding your mind quite steady, but feeling no urgency or tension about it. Once a day; don't push it or attempt to force it. As you begin to get results, make the period a little longer, but never strain at it.' p. 165.

She then goes back a step for those of us that are slow and have difficulty with that.

'Choose a simple object, like a child's gray rubber ball... hold the ball in your hand and look at it, confining your attention to that one simple object, and calling your mind back to it quietly whenever it begins to wander. When you are able to think of the object and nothing else for some moments, take the next step. Close your eyes and go on looking at the ball, thinking of nothing else. Then see if you can let even that simple idea slip away.'  p. 166

That is the basic skill; that you need to relax your mind and give your genius room to move. To apply it to your writing she suggests taking an idea, or a character, and just holding it in your mind and letting your stillness centre around that.

'Presently you will see the almost incredible results. Ideas which you held rather academically and unconvincingly will take on colour and form; a character that was a puppet will move and breathe.' p. 166.

So, this is the last part of the puzzle for putting it all together, the preparation of the artistic mind for creation.

Let us start from the beginning (and so as not to be accused of plagiarism, this is a mixture of Dorothea, Kate Forsyth's advice on Creating Flow, and my own experience/thoughts).

First, you should have an image, a chance phrase, a personal description, something which you consider to indicate you have a book. Take this little spark and spend time blowing on it, brainstorming it out further; fuller descriptions of the characters, charting out possible plots that could include that phrase or image. Dorothea suggests viewing the whole in a pleasant, indulgent mood, seeing what turns up. If you are in the middle of a work, take the scene that you think you will be working on that day. Plot out how far you want to get in the block of time you have set aside for writing. Start building the anticipation for what you will write.

It is then time to give your mind a chance to play with it further. Take the draft with you, and go for a walk around a loop. Not a fast walk, but something that becomes rhythmical and monotonous.  In this time, don't think on how to write the story, but just on being in the story. That is, don't choose words to describe scenes, or think of dialogue tags, but just watch your characters talking or the action as it takes place.

Return home and have something light (not sugary or caffeinated) to eat. Kate suggests something like a banana, which makes good sense. I have found toast too insubstantial, porridge good but can make me want to sleep, and straight protein and vegetables filling without inducing drowsiness (had left over steak on mashed cauliflower for breakfast today, which was pretty good, but some might find having steak that early a bit weird, which I can understand).

Then have a shower or a bath. This does wonders for the body, mind and genius.

Now, find yourself a dark space and lie down, unless prone to falling asleep, in that case trying sitting. Now is the genius' time. First, still the body, then still the mind. As Dorothea commands 'lie there, not quite asleep, not quite awake'.

'After a while - it may be twenty minutes, it may be an hour, it may be two - you will feel a definite impulse to rise, a kind of surge of energy. Obey it at once; you will be in a slightly somnambulistic state indifferent to everything on earth except what you are about to write; dull to all the outer world but vividly alive to the world of your imagination... the state you are in at the moment is the state an artist works in.' p.169

Now, I should put in a disclaimer. I have yet to try the entire sequence. In the morning I have been trying to still my mind a bit before sitting down to write, but don't have time to go for a walk before work. After work I go to the gym, eat then have a shower, but then sit straight down and write because I won't have enough time if I try to brainstorm and then meditate.

However, tomorrow is my day off, so I'm going to test out the entire sequence and see how I go. I can imagine that it would probably improve the more you do it, too. So, will see if I can implement it more frequently.

If anyone else wants to test it out and review it as a method, I would love to hear your thoughts and suggestions.

Until tomorrow night.

Buffy. 

 

A Tried and True Method for Overcoming Writer's Block

Dorothea came through! Yes, a book written 80 years ago - just as good today as it was then. 

For those of you who didn't read my last post, I was suffering from fear and decided to turn to Dorothea Brande's classic 'On Becoming a Writer' to see if she had any help. 

So, my problem: kept getting stuck editing what I had already written, and couldn't bring myself to write anything new, secretly afraid that the work was weak and the story just wasn't going to hang together.

Then Dorothea explained it all to me.

Ms. Brande discusses the writer's temperament, and argues that to be a writer, the individual needs to cultivate two natures which for ease of identification I am calling the elder and the youth. The elder is the practical side of a writer, which is often neglected in descriptions of great artists, but it is the part that makes you sit down to write when you don't feel like it, and when it comes to the second draft brings in the critical eye, etc. The youth, on the other hand, is the wild, creative genius that comes up with brilliant ideas and cares not for proper grammar, story arc, or such mundane things as whether it is marketable. It cares only for the creative flow and story.

Ms. Brande argues that you need both, need to develop and cultivate both, but also learn when to reign one in and when to allow the other their head.

My problem, according to Ms. Brande, was that I had allowed the elder to step in while I should have still been working in the youth. The elder will always slow down work, because they are worried about how things fit together, searching for a better way, critically examining what is being written. This is fabulous for the second draft, but is of very little use until the youth has completed the first. In editing my work as I went, I restrained the youth, told them to take a back seat and then was surprised when I could no longer find that flare to write.

So today, keeping this in mind, I let my mind run riot. On a number of occasions I caught myself trying to control what I was about to type, maybe find a better word, or go back to that last sentence. I stopped it, held back the elder and told my youth to carry on. And he did (don't ask me why my youth is a male, he just is, and so is my elder. I'm sure psychologists would have a field day with that, but as long as I can keep writing I don't mind). A few times I faulted, but I whispered encouragement to my youth, told him he would not be judged on what he came up with, and just let him go again.

And I got the third chapter completely written. It worked for me fabulously.

Unfortunately, most of the writing I'm going to be doing will be purely in the youth because of the focus on first drafts. I will be lucky if I get one day a fortnight to work in the elder actually editing. Though the elder is also the one that makes sure I actually sit down and write. If I left it to the youth to write when he felt like it, I would be like I was for the last 10 years, without anything to show for my desire to be a writer.

So, for anyone that is feeling stuck and might be suffering the same thing, I highly recommend seeing if you are holding your youth back and trying to write too much with your elder. Elders are not creative, they cannot make a draft, they can only edit it and improve it later.

So, I am now up to 70,050 words! As my first novel was 70,000 (I was entering it into a competition which had a max word limit for young adult entries of 70,000), I feel that I'm doing well. Story-wise I also feel like I'm almost at the end. I just have to write the final scenes. This might take another 10,000 or so words, but we will see.

I currently have a friend from overseas staying, who only has two days to see Melbourne (pah, I say, Pah!) so am going to be spending some time showing her around (and did spend most of tonight catching up, which is why I'm writing and posting so late) but I still have high hopes that I will finish the novel at the latest by Thursday and have Friday to do a read through edit. I will then put it aside and start thinking about the next in the series.

It has started to play on my mind that it might actually be four books. The first one happened over a school term, and I thought this one would take place over two terms, but in fact it has only been one term. So maybe the last one will be two terms, but it wouldn't surprise me now if it was another term itself and then the final one would be the end of the year. But that would be the end of that. Luckily I kept one fortnight free in my planning just in case I did decide to lengthen out one of the series. So not all is lost.

Sleep tight my elder, my youth and my reader.

Yours,

Buffy.