by James Dowd
For new Writers, the ones who want to be but haven’t yet earned the title, take note: these powers are not held by professional Writers alone. It’s in you, right now! We’re ultimately talking about the brain — our endless canvas, where words live and breathe — and it’s open to all.
Artists, designers, strategists, thinkers, and any sort of creator in this world, you’ve made it this far, so I have a gift for you: you, as well, are magical. You too have the power to create thoughts, feelings, and imagery in people’s minds in your own way. You speak, you write, and you think, so you are unstoppable, as well.
How? By using your passions and craft to tell stories. You are human and therefore you are a natural storyteller. It’s built into you. You can control minds with those stories. You do it for yourself without realizing. Every night your stories give you an escape, letting you play in fantasy worlds. You go to bed and your brain sits up telling itself wonderful stories, both memorable and mundane.
Never forget that you are here today because mankind has spent thousands upon thousands of years developing the magic of communication and stories. How dare you not believe in it. How dare you not believe in yourself. How dare you not open your soul and share your magic with others!
Never forget that those who truly believed in their magic — who dedicated themselves to wielding it in new, powerful, exciting ways — they will live forever. Tell me that’s not magic. Never forget that you are a force of nature with all the power of the universe on the tip of your tongue. Words are mankind’s greatest creation; capable of transcending time and space; capable of controlling the human mind; capable of anything.
You can do anything. You don’t just have your life to control, or progress, write, or rewrite. You have ever world imaginable, and as yet unimaginable. As a writer, you have the unique power to create new worlds and shape them as you see fit. That can scare you and you can do nothing, or it can empower you. So, embrace words and their power. Imagine the unimaginable. Create for the sake of creating, for inspiring. Read, write, tell stories, wield your magic. Be a magician.
Write With Blood
“He who writes in blood…does not want to be read,
he wants to be learned by heart.”
— Nietzsche
Another way to express the process and ability of writing with Heart over Head is doing so with Blood. That’s because talented Writers and creatives have something beyond skill that cannot truly be explained, harnessed, or diagnosed. It’s a deep, emotional hunger to make, dissect, understand, share, destroy. It’s our ability to transcend education and experience to somehow craft new things and new worlds. It’s our ability to do something with Blood.
To do anything with Blood — with passion — is to be skillful, deliberate, and precise with your actions, and to not simply follow all the right steps and rules, but to put yourself — all of you— into the work. Whether you’re a Writer, a designer, a painter, a developer — or any doer, maker, believer — you can go beyond simple step-by-step structures and established processes to create something immensely powerful and unforgettable.
As a professional who strings words together for a living, I believe that writing with Blood is to write with spirit, to feel the energy in you and around you, and to funnel it into your work. It means including everything that is you; the best and the worst parts of yourself, all there, right on the page.
Call it divine frenzy, poetic madness, a drunken outburst, or simply inspiration (from the Latin inspirare, meaning “to breathe into.”) Whatever you call it, our power is a gift that is breathed into us and can never be shared or truly explained. Simply, our Blood is our innate talent. Skills can be learned, but our natural ability, our irrational spirit, the Blood for the work, can never be taught.
This natural, savage style of work, and our passion for it, thrives on uncertainty. If we always knew what it would look or sound like, we’d be too bored to complete it, so we must stumble over ourselves for a time in order to truly create. We must embrace our curiosity and imagination and reach out into the darkness. We must open a vein and bleed.
If we don’t bleed, our work, our world, becomes a tired exercise of habit and commonplace. We find our routines and our style, and we repeat, repeat, repeat. Someone who doesn’t write with Blood becomes a tourist to the work. They go to the same old, uninspired places. They become predictable, hitting the spots everyone expects them to hit. They’re never truly seeking new worlds, or looking to create them. They aren’t sneaking down back streets to discover the mysterious and unknown. They aren’t creating truly unique experiences.
Sure, powerful experiences, crafted by talent, can be finely curated and perfected over time. But, they’re hardly special, and rarely memorable. As a creator, you must be willing to take the journey your work demands. You must answer its call, abandon preconceived beliefs, and be willing to go places you’ve never dared explore before. Because, that’s where greatness lies.
“Be daring, be different, be impractical, be anything that will assert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision against the play-it-safers, the creatures of commonplace, the slaves of the ordinary.” — Cecil Beaton
Writing with Blood is to misbehave. Tell a creative it’s already been done, and they’ll gladly find a different way to do it. That’s because where we see disorder, we wish to create order. Where we see harmony, we wish to create chaos. It’s up to us creative minds to break the rules, to ask what’s next, and to find connections between strange, unexpected things.
To write, to create, to design, to play, to do anything with Blood is to escape yourself in order to disrupt routines, expectations, and most of the trivial things you’ve been taught. It’s not a kicking and screaming disruption of the work, yourself, or the world around you, but a disruption of the way you look at the work, yourself, and the world around you. I believe deeply that repetition limits our creativity, so we must bravely disrupt conformity with every opportunity, and resolve the struggle of defending our own beliefs in the face of others. We all seek acceptance, but first we must accept that our individual beliefs are unique and our own, and we must rebel from expectations to find our way — the way we truly believe in.
To write with blood is to admit, at least to yourself, you’re wrong. Assurance in your work breeds stagnation, and stagnation perpetuates mechanical thinking. If you’re not admitting you’re wrong, or that you can go further still, you’re not looking at things differently enough to learn. So, adapt to and seek new changes and possibilities. Strive even in your pursuit of failure. Always dare mighty things without trepidation. To quote from a great adventurer of world and thought, “Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those timid spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.”
By simply abandoning these fears and negative, dispirited feelings, we are actually activating our brain to truly create. Creativity is a neurological process, so when you create, the prefrontal cortex of the brain is suppressed, which is linked to conscious self-monitoring. One part of the brain turns on, and the other turns off. What that means is if you allow yourself to self edit (on paper or in-person) while creating, the creative, magical part of your brain, is turning off. Actively trying to prevent yourself from making a mistake or follow rules means you’re no longer creating new perspectives or putting your full self into the work. You’re a machine that is willingly turning itself off precisely when you’re supposed to be working. You’re disabling your own machinery, and for what? To not embarrass yourself? The result is willingly forgoing your right to perspective, and to the pursuit of fresh thinking, of new ideas.
On the subject of perspective and new ideas, Oliver Burkeman wrote:
“We see the world, and our work, through countless lenses of assumption and habit — fixed ways of thinking, seeing and acti
ng, of which we’re usually unconscious. And that’s exactly as it should be: Our brains are wired to automate as many processes as possible, thereby freeing up resources for the unforeseen…You’d never manage to order a burrito — let alone write a novel or complete a redesign — if you had to think consciously about every step. First open your mouth; next, get your tongue in position to form words; then activate your vocal cords…”
In my not-always-so-humble opinion, creativity comes from the self, you, the individual. But, my guide to the spirit world of creative magic, the aforementioned Liz Gilbert feels the opposite. Writing about the power of divine creativity in her powerful book Big Magic and detailing the history of the spiritual influence in her insanely inspiring Ted Talk, Gilbert attributes the “Blood” of many artists to be the “geniuses” of ancient Rome and the “daemons” of ancient Greece, amongst other spiritual beings throughout time and space. They’re the magical entities that carry with them a creative power, and invisibly assist us mortal artists and creators in our work — whether in our studio walls, in our minds, or floating through the wind. The artists of the past, and of Gilbert’s world, possess the mysterious powers of a “divine attendant spirit that came to human-beings from some distant and unknowable source for distant and unknowable reasons.” In fact, with the Renaissance, the artist was not only regarded as one of genius, but by fanciful names, like “the Divine Michelangelo.”
Gilbert goes on to discuss how by associating the work with a disembodied spirit, the creator can disassociate themselves from their emotional connections, thus avoiding the crippling effects of certain critique and potential failure. Or, it does the opposite by disconnecting them from the just-as-crippling over-inflation of ego that comes with success. This is a valuable perspective in overcoming the sensitive nature of us creatives. After all, we tend to be serious drinkers and addicts in order to combat the emotional ties to our work, and the constant unsympathetic examinations from the world.
Whether you believe it’s a heavenly spirit, or you yourself, your Blood is the power to create. You simply have to harness that energy, that emotion, that spirit, and focus it into your work. Forget your fears, and the oncoming critiques. Prevent yourself from being haunted by mistake or failure, or from realizing you’re not truly as great as you’ve told yourself before the work’s created.
Place your trust in your Blood, and it will guide you. And remember, this rare power works for you. It is you. You control it, inspire it, cage it, or let it loose. It is your soul, and your disruption of your world is your ability to channel it toward mighty things. Now’s the time for you to create, to open a vein and bleed, and to leave behind the expected. Remember to not just write, but to put yourself into it. Bleed! Live through your work. Give it life. Give it a pulse.
Write with Blood, always. That happens by putting yourself into the work, emotionally and even sometimes physically. It often looks like clenched teeth and a wry smile. It comes with hysterical, maniacal laughter, bouts of talking to one’s self, occasional convulsions, and often unstoppable tears. Sometimes you say you’re writing with Blood with lots of dramatic exclamation, including a wee little jig and some stuff being carelessly thrown up into the air. If you need a clear visual example of Blood, watch Freddie Mercury perform. However, it does manifest in so many ways, so find yours. Find what makes that act of writing something magical. Find the work no one else could create because it’s so unmistakably, unabashedly you. You know you’ve found it when, at the end of the day, you reread something so mundane as your work emails for pleasure. You notice all the little things you did — little bits of clever writing that probably only you will pay any attention to, but the mere fact that they now exist out in the world is just fucking amazing, isn’t it?
Writing With Your Head
“Writing is thinking.
To write well is to think clearly.
That’s why it is so hard.”
— David McCullough
Good writing is just good editing, and with the Head, this is where you edit all that crap you Dumped out earlier. If writing with Heart was about creative madness, passion, and emotion flowing freely from your veins, then writing with Head is about process and order. It’s about thinking through your words effectively and efficiently, without ever overthinking them. It’s allowing your brain to work without softening it through fear, insecurity, ego, excess thought, and all the other shit up there mucking up your words. It’s not about being smarter, it’s about simplifying — actually dumbing things down and working through it with intention, so that you may process all that you dumped out with Heart. It’s the linking of ideas, not the writing of new ones. Now, at this stage in your writing process, your logical side takes over and puts the puzzle together.
Another way to look at it is that writing with Heart was about planting trees. You were deep in the dirt, never thinking about what this little tree might do or become. You were in the moment, freewheeling and care-free, planting as many trees as possible and trusting in them, believing that some will eventually grow into something great and lasting and some may not, but it wasn’t for you to worry about that day. You just worked, never demanding the trees to be a finished, fully-grown that day, as you should never have expected your Braindumpings to be complete when they hadn’t even had the chance to be nourished. (Wow, this is a dumb metaphor. Let’s continue.) Now that you have a field of saplings, writing with Head is stepping back to observe and manage your growing forest. It’s time to be methodical, and decisive, because sometimes you’ll have to cut trees back. Sometimes you’ll notice that they never grew at all, that they had no place in this forest, that they were never a tree at all. They were weeds, sucking the life from your trees and overcrowding your forest, and it is time for you to remove them. (Yeah, dumb metaphor, let’s move past it.)
If the Heart is writing, then the Head is editing and rewriting to be more realistic for your medium and audience. It’s the process of taking what you have Braindumped and polishing it into something worth sharing — getting you closer to done. Before, your effort was to write freely and openly in order to capture many options, ideas, and feelings, and now your effort is to carefully select and cut your ramblings into a tighter form. Without that Heart writing, the pages now would be blank, and you can’t fix blank, you can only fix bad.
Writing with Head is where you consolidate and consider structure, format, and the reader. It’s where you can rely on style and rules of grammar or you can entirely abandon them. If the Heart was about dumping out 100 things, the Head is about finding the few pieces that actually work, that add value and express what you intended to communicate, and then stringing them together into a cohesive structure and flow.
Though the Heart can be excessive, resulting in you, the Writer, producing way too much content in your Dump, most of which will likely never even be used, the simple effort of creating this excess makes the Head’s job easier. It can focus on making it clear and connected, instead of having to suddenly think up a few more ideas, or clever ways to say it. The more time you spend trying to be clever, the more time you waste. Write dumb, not clever, and clever will find its way through somehow.
In the Head phases of your writing process, you have it easy. The load has been lightened. You were creative before, and now you don’t have to be anymore. You can relax and simply fix that pile of crap that is your Dump. To make it easier, you can even templatize the rest of your journey, putting your work into traditional formats, like Joseph Campbell’s “The Hero’s Journey” or Kurt Vonnegut’s “Shapes of Stories.” Whatever is practical and thought-out works here. This is not a time to imagine new things, it’s time to focus your efforts into a completed work.
With structure, you can create anything. Your Dump was a flood of thoughts, ideas, and emotions, but without structure, it is nothing. With Head though, you can take it and craft a song, a movie, or an email — anything! — because all those things are only differentiated by their struc
ture and format. Take a 100-page Braindump and cut it into a 3-minute song, and then a 1-page poem. It’s all the same thoughts, ideas, and emotions, only structured differently. The Heart is still in there, but you’ve used your Head to edit it differently for how you want the world to consume it.
(Uh oh, watch out. Another stupid metaphor is coming your way!)
Think of writing with Heart and Head like a reality TV show. They shoot those things for weeks, if not months. They capture everything with their many cameras — as much as possible. Oh so much of it (if not all of it) is absolutely trash, like your Braindump. But, then they edit it. They chop it all up, move things around, throw things away. They stop trying to constantly create new ideas, and they simply focus on what they have. They give it structure, and drama, and meaning to all the footage they’ve shot. They do one thing and then the other, not both simultaneously, because you can’t edit what you haven’t shot, and you don’t have a show just because you shot something. That’s why your time writing with Heart was to provide as much footage as possible. Now it’s time to edit your show, or whatever it is you’re writing, into something that’s worth paying attention to.
The value of separating Heart and Head — one and then the other — is in your ability to focus, and not randomly jump between thinking and feeling, writing and editing. That back-and-forth only disrupts your flow and results in confusion and a gnawing internal debate over your words, resulting in blocks and unfinished writing. The controlled nature of the Head, and its reliance on guidelines and structure, allows you to focus not on what could be, but what will be. It is now that you focus on finished. So, separate and simplify, write with Heart, edit with Head, and you will write better, faster.
Dumb Writing Tip #22: Find self-control in simplification.
Writing with your Head is about simplifying and clarifying. By doing this, you’re restraining yourself and your creative efforts so that things become clearer, more achievable, and your stress decreases. You are slowing down the frantic nature of your Heart with simpler, focused tasks. To do this, make the moment clear in terms of what you’re doing, where you’re doing it, and how much time you’re allowing. And, be honest with yourself. You’re going to be a lazy bum. You’re only human. Allow yourself a set time for “research” (scrolling mindlessly on the internet as you inevitably procrastinate) but when you are past that time, there’s no more. There is no Wikipedia, no social, no Google. Focus. You’re done “researching,” it’s that simple. Straight-up unplug your router if you have to.