Saturday, November 2, 2013

Rediscover Your Love of Writing: How to Choose What to Write About


What I’m about to say about this is likely very different from the ten thousand things you may have run across on the internet about choosing what to focus on and finding inspiration for your work.  Not that those other things aren’t cool – they are.  I’ve gotten a lot out of writing prompts, and Nanowrimo’s Adopt a Plot forum, and blogs about find topics about writing blogs.

But if I’m working on something bigger – a novel, the copy on my website that’s supposed to be an authentic representation of the kind of work I want to do to change the world, or a magazine article to submit to a publication that goes out to tens or even hundreds of thousands of people – my heart has to be in it, one hundred percent.  It has to be the work’s beginning, and it’s end.

Tell me if this sounds familiar: you have a feeling that there is something within you that wants to come out, if you could just put your finger on it.  Maybe it’s an idea for a whole new project, or maybe it’s finding the next step in something that you’re already working on.   It’s the perfect thing.  It feels beautiful, powerful, like a spark of fire inside of you.

But it’s also a slippery little devil.  And you can’t think of exactly what it is.  And then the monkey mind starts to have it’s fun.

One of the favorites tricks my monkey mind likes to play is search and search and search for a good idea, and when I come up with one, to tell me that it’s cliché, or rote, and that I’ll put tons of time into something that my friends will read and think less of me for, because it’s so trivial.  So then I try to think up something that will be new and fresh and unusual, which monkey mind will respond is pretentious. 

There’s just no winning in that game.  The key is getting out of the game entirely. 

We need to source our writing ideas from someplace else, other than the intensity of our analytical prowess.  It can still be from within our minds – after all, our minds include the beautiful powers of visioning and imagination.  And we can use the powers of our linear capabilities in service to our imagination and our hearts, when we are developing plot or synching up a series of blog posts to create a series, for example.

But when trying to decide what to write, or anytime you’re really stuck, it’s the heart that will guide you through.

To do that, here’s what I invite you to do:

1) Find yourself someplace lovely, and private, to be.  That could be a café, if your home is too busy for you to be undisturbed there.  It can be Tilden Park, or Bernal Hill.  It can be the shower.

2) Do something to get your mind to be quiet, and to set the judgement-and-expectation-demons at bay for a little while.  That could be some kind of breathing or meditation technique, but it also could be listening to your favorite music, or stretching and moving your body for a little while.

3) Ask yourself, “What do I want to write about?  What is pulling me right now?  What would I really like?”  Then be quiet and let your Self answer, in all of the more subtle ways that it does.  Give Self a little time to pontificate without asking it the hard questions about how, why, or for whom.  Just see what floats up.  You could also do this as an automatic writing exercise by setting a timer for five minutes, putting your pen to the page or fingers to the keypad, and letting loose until the buzzer goes off. 

4) After you have a couple of possible ideas or bare-glimpses-of-ideas (two to four is a good number), do something to shake out the energy.  That could be literally shaking, standing up to stretch, or changing the music on Pandora. 

5) Now go back to your conversation with Self.  Ask, “What’s important about this?” for each of the ideas that you came up with.  Notice that we are not asking ourselves what stinks about it or is unrealistic or is has poor marketing potential.  Just, what’s important about it, or “what will writing about this do (or mean) for me?”  You could set the old timer again if doing this as an automatic writing exercise works for you.

6) Shake out the energy again, and ask yourself, again for each idea, “How would I know that this piece of writing was successful?  What would the language be like, the tone, and how would I feel reading it, and writing it?”

7) Go take a short walk. 

8) Come back, look at what you’ve written, and make a decision based on that.  Or sleep on it, and make your decision the next day – unless, of course, you’ve committed to writing 1500 words a day and already 855 words behind, like I am.

9) Tell us all how it went and what else works for you when you’re trying to figure out what to write about in the comments below.

In the writer’s trenches with you,
Rebecca

Words for yesterday: 1845 (1200 for the blog, 645 novel) 

4 comments:

  1. Day 2
    I did my own version of choosing what to write yesterday and came up with the following short list which I e-mailed Rebecca:

    Nov. 1 - My Writer's Mission for the day week and month.
    Day: finish and send the reply to Egyoku.
    Week: (11/2-8) write and publish edsbriefbio sections from retirement up to present time
    Month: write and publish blog post "Moments of Grace"

    It looks like going through the steps of today's exercise will add some value, so here goes:

    1) Find yourself someplace lovely, and private, to be. That could be a café, if your home is too busy for you to be undisturbed there. It can be Tilden Park, or Bernal Hill. It can be the shower.

    I did my daily meditation after reading the Day 1 e-mail. I sit on a chair in our bedroom while Mary is at work.

    2) Do something to get your mind to be quiet, and to set the judgement-and-expectation-demons at bay for a little while. That could be some kind of breathing or meditation technique, but it also could be listening to your favorite music, or stretching and moving your body for a little while.

    I did the daily zen meditation I've been doing since I had beginner's instruction from Mel Weitsman in Berkeley in 1969.

    3) Ask yourself, “What do I want to write about? What is pulling me right now? What would I really like?” Then be quiet and let your Self answer, in all of the more subtle ways that it does. Give Self a little time to pontificate without asking it the hard questions about how, why, or for whom. Just see what floats up. You could also do this as an automatic writing exercise by setting a timer for five minutes, putting your pen to the page or fingers to the keypad, and letting loose until the buzzer goes off.

    This pretty much describes the process I went through yesterday before seeing the above suggestion. It was the natural unfolding of taking the previous day's assignment, "Formulate a Writer's Mission for the day, week, and month", as my koan for the day. I love to work on a koan. To me that means to hold a little story loosely until it begins to unpack and then connects with layers of one's heart and mind. Slowly winnow out the connections that are not essential to the point. Allow the central connections to deepen and test them against reality as you know it in your bones.

    4) After you have a couple of possible ideas or bare-glimpses-of-ideas (two to four is a good number), do something to shake out the energy. That could be literally shaking, standing up to stretch, or changing the music on Pandora.

    You named a few of the activities of my daily life, which provide a break from the self-assigned koan and immersion in the underlying koan, sometimes called "ordinary mind is the way".

    5) Now go back to your conversation with Self. Ask, “What’s important about this?” for each of the ideas that you came up with. Notice that we are not asking ourselves what stinks about it or is unrealistic or has poor marketing potential. Just, what’s important about it, or “what will writing about this do (or mean) for me?” You could set the old timer again if doing this as an automatic writing exercise works for you.

    What's important about this?
    A. Finish and send the reply to Egyoku.
    I was stuck trying to put the finishing touches on a reply to an email I had received about the death of a dear mutual friend the day before. Finishing the difficult communication became the first part of my Writer's Mission. It helped me face the matter of life and death. That's important.

    B. Write and publish edsbriefbio sections from retirement up to present time
    Since I can no longer speak, due to a neuromuscular disease, I have an online page to ease the process of introducing myself to new people.

    http://sites.google.com/site/edsbriefbio

    ReplyDelete
  2. I have made multiple attempts at putting together something like a memoir. Although this one is only a sketchy chronology, it is the currently active version of documenting my life, and the only one available on the Internet. The problem is it ends when I retired in June 2011. I have been sketching more rows for the table, offline, to bring it up to present time. Now, as part of the 30-day challenge, I'm giving myself a
    week finish that little project. One reason it's important is to establish some correlation between my two active writing projects: the self-refential Edsbriefbio and the Earth-centric Active Hope blog. Since the most recent and final row in the updated Briefbio table will be the Active Hope course, I want to work on fashioning the bio so it dramatically culminates in discovering and embracing The Work That Reconnects.

    C. Write and publish blog post "Moments of Grace"
    This is important first because it is the next step in fulfilling the one year writing commitment I just made in the "Active Hope" online course.

    Long-term goal: Help co-create the global planetary consciousness that is necessary for the self-healing of the earth.
    One-year goal: Write a paper (and possibly a blog of the work in progress) that unpacks this vision of an evolution of consciousness. Explore it deeply and thoroughly enough that publishing it makes a contribution to the healing of the earth.
    One-week commitment: Set up a structure for gathering all the ingredients, strands, and facets of the project.

    One week after the course ended I published a blog post announcing the successful completion of the one week goal.
    http://ahsg13.blogspot.com/2013/10/going-forth.html
    Since then I have been reading and accumulating ideas. As the brainstorming took on my usual centrifugal scatter, I decided on a seed text to use as a focus. It is the short chapter called "Moments of Grace" in Thomas Berry's book The Great Work. Again I took the text as a koan, and began to allow it to percolate in my mind. Then the 30-day challenge e-mail arrived! Aha! My challenge is to complete the first blog posting with real content! It's important because it is the next step in fulfilling a commitment, but more important, if I do it well I may be making a contribution to healing our world. I would feel really good about that!

    6) Shake out the energy again, and ask yourself, again for each idea, “How would I know that this piece of writing was successful? What would the language be like, the tone, and how would I feel reading it, and writing it?”
    A. Finish and send the reply to Egyoku.
    I was very happy with the message I sent under the "pressure" of the challenge.

    B. Write and publish edsbriefbio sections from retirement up to present time
    This just needs to flow seamlessly from the 38 items above it in the chart.

    C. Write and publish blog post "Moments of Grace"
    What I want most for this piece is that it feel like an authentic original contribution rather than a recycling of old concepts or irrelevant wishful thinking. The tone should be as serious as the global challenge, but brightened by language that gives the reader the pleasure of exercising subtle intelligence. Writing it I want to feel inspired by helping make an archetypally powerful vision more central to the ongoing dialog. Reading it I want to feel turned on to share it widely.

    7) Go take a short walk.

    8) Come back, look at what you’ve written, and make a decision based on that. Or sleep on it, and make your decision the next day – unless, of course, you’ve committed to writing 1500 words a day and already 855 words behind, like I am.
    I already decided what to work on, and this exercise confirms it, adding more context and detail.

    9) Go to the blog post version of this note here, and tell us all how it went and what else works for you when you’re trying to figure out what to write about

    ReplyDelete
  3. I am SO sorry that's so long. I won't do it again.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Hey Ed! This is awesome! I'm so glad to hear that you're embracing this whole-heartedly. Your ideas sound beautiful, and it sounds like you're bringing a lot of consciousness to the process. Please continue to report back about how it's going!

    ReplyDelete