Around the Writer's Block

by Rosanne Bane

  Don’t worry—your capacity to sit for ten or fifteen minutes day after day truly doing nothing is much smaller than you might think. If you keep showing up, you’ll start doing something that moves your writing forward. The real challenge is to stop distracting yourself and running away.

  INSIDE THE WRITER’S BRAIN: TAKING THE SCARY OUT

  All of us have a mix of positive and negative responses to our writing. The brain remembers negative experiences differently than positive ones. When you experience something dangerous or threatening, you tend to remember lots of incidental details so your limbic system can react to them in the future (because anything associated with the previous danger could be part of the danger, and from a survival perspective, it’s better to overreact to something that’s benign than to not react to something that’s dangerous).

  As you may recall from Aimee’s story in chapter two, your limbic system will respond even if you don’t remember the previous negative experience. This is the origin of the unsettled, anxious feeling so many writers get when we sit down to write or think about writing. Our brains have learned that writing can be scary.

  Fortunately, the nature of neuroplasticity means we can retrain our brains. With a lot of repetition of positive experiences, we can learn that showing up to write doesn’t have to be scary. We’ll review when and how to reward yourself in chapter seven; for now, know that giving yourself a small treat every time you show up for Product Time and letting yourself feel good about your accomplishment is part of retraining your brain that writing is not dangerous.

  Dr. Mary Maloney, a professor in the Management Department at the University of St. Thomas, learned to stop seeing writing as a threat. Mary writes not because she has a secret passion to write the great American novel or publish her memoirs—she writes because she has to. “I’ve never enjoyed writing, but it’s a necessary part of my job. I’d put off writing up my research, then kill myself meeting a deadline, then dislike writing even more based on that unpleasant experience, then go on to procrastinate my next project.”

  Mary’s fear and desperation made it much more difficult for her to write than it had to be, and made her writing less effective than it could be.

  After we talked about the neurology of resistance and how her anxiety and resistance put her limbic brain in charge and silenced her cortex, Mary learned new habits to retrain her brain. Instead of waiting until she absolutely had to start writing a paper or manuscript, she challenged herself to put in fifteen minutes of Product Time a day, five days a week (along with practicing Process and Self-care). As Mary built her Product Time habit, she realized that she actually enjoyed some writing-related tasks, like documenting the results of her research. Expanding her idea about what counts for Product Time allowed her to start “writing” sooner, refine her analysis, improve the final product, and more fully appreciate the aspects of research that she is passionate about. While writing journal articles will never be Mary’s passion, it’s no longer scary.

  Showing Up Is Key

  Showing up isn’t half the battle; it is the battle.

  Spike Carlsen, author of A Splintered History of Wood and Ridiculously Simple Furniture Projects, believes writers—and our writing—yearn for the structure that showing up for Product Time gives us. “When I was raising five mutinous teenagers, people would often expound, ‘They may act like they don’t like structure and discipline—but deep down inside, they yearn for it.’ So it is with writing: Your words may play hooky, sulk, roll their eyes at you, hang out with the wrong prepositional phrases, but deep down inside, they like Product Time. It provides them with structure—and the subliminal peace of mind that comes with it. Someday your words will thank you for it.”

  For some writers, the idea of “Product” Time can sound intimidating. Emerging novelist Dr. John Drozdal observes, “Before I really understood what Product Time meant, I was under the impression that I had to ‘produce something’ and I wasn’t sure I could handle the pressure. Once I understood that the commitment is to show up to write, I discovered that it actually reduced the anxiety. Now I look forward to that time. And I’m writing.”

  Keeping the promise to show up is essential. Norman Mailer points out in The Spooky Art: Some Thoughts on Writing, “If you tell yourself you are going to be at your desk tomorrow, you are by that declaration asking your unconscious to prepare the material. . . . You have to maintain trustworthy relations. If you wake up in the morning with a hangover and cannot get to literary work, your unconscious, after a few such failures to appear, will withdraw.”1

  Mailer observes that you can recover trust with your unconscious—the source of all your imagination and innovation—but you have to earn it. You earn it by showing up even if you think you have nothing to write, even if you feel restless or think there’s something else “more important” that you should be doing. Showing up every time you say you will, no matter what else is going on that day, builds and maintains the neural pathways for writing (a.k.a. your writing habit).

  When you show your unconscious you are sincere and trustworthy, you will find your unconscious is generous in its forgiveness. Your mind will sparkle with exciting images and intriguing ideas and you’ll have plenty to work with in your Product Time.

  How to Evaluate Product Time

  NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) participants and some well-known authors like Stephen King keep track of their writing in terms of how many words they string together—50,000 words in the month of November for NaNoWriMo, 2,000 words a day, 365 days a year for Mr. King. Keeping track of word counts can be very effective when we are drafting and generating new material.

  The problem with relying exclusively on word counts to evaluate your Product Time is that, as we’ll see in the Stages of the Creative Process table, there are six stages in the creative process, and in only one of those six stages do we actually have pen on the page or fingers on the keyboard generating words to count. If we think word counts are the only measure of how hard we’re working and how much progress we’re making, we will be very discouraged while we’re in any of the other five stages. Because word counts cannot account for all the work we do throughout the entire creative process, overreliance on them can demoralize us and generate the very anxiety and resistance we need to avoid.

  This is why I tell my students and coaching clients to keep word counts if they wish while they’re drafting, but they will be best served by evaluating their Product Time throughout all stages of the creative process not by how many words or pages they write or how good the writing is, but simply by whether or not they show up.

  Stages of the Creative Process

  The Stages of the Creative Process table identifies the characteristics of the six stages in the creative process and what kinds of work a writer can do in each stage. Notice that although you may be freewriting or recording questions and answers in a journal during several stages, only in Verification do you draft, edit and revise. What most people think of as “writing time” occurs in the Verification stage. You can’t get to Verification without working your way through the previous four stages. You need to give yourself time and credit for all your creative work.

  In Dancing in the Dragon’s Den: Rekindling the Creative Fire in Your Shadow, I referenced the five-stage creative process Betty Edwards describes in Drawing on the Artist Within and added a sixth stage, Hibernation, based on my experience and observations as a teacher and coach. (For more details on the first five stages and the evolution of ideas about the creative process, see Drawing on the Artist Within;2 for more information on Hibernation and the significance of the stages to resistance, see Dancing in the Dragon’s Den.)3

  Edwards suggests that different stages require different kinds of thinking, what she calls L-mode and R-mode (referring the left and right hemispheres). These correspond to Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor’s description of hemispheric differences reviewed in ch
apter three. L-mode is a style of thinking that relies on the logical, linear perceptions and interpretations the left hemisphere excels in, and R-mode is a style of thinking that relies on the fluid, circular perceptions and interpretations of the right hemisphere. According to Edwards, First Insight, Incubation, and Illumination are mainly R-mode, while Saturation and Verification are mainly L-mode. I disagree with Edwards only in the case of Illumination, which I’m convinced is equally R- and L-modes.

  Since the styles of thinking and the function of each stage are different, the kinds of activities a writer needs to do to move through each stage also vary. What you’ll do in Product Time varies depending on what stage you’re in. Don’t worry if you’re not sure what stage you’re in—as long as you show up and do something related to your writing, you’ve honored your commitment to Product Time.

  First Insight

  This is the preliminary stage of discovering what you want to write about or what problem you want to solve. It is that first glimmer of an idea you get when you see the whole picture and recognize what’s problematic or missing (the holes within the whole, in other words) as creative possibilities. Many writers in First Insight feel guilty about wandering aimlessly in search of something to write about, not realizing this is what First Insight is all about. It’s vital in First Insight to ask lots of open-ended, “what if?” “why not?” “how about?” questions. Assuming you know the answers prevents you from recognizing the possibilities inherent in First Insight.

  During First Insight, it’s not so much what you do in Product Time as how you do it. This is when reading News of the Weird, watching seemingly random video clips and documentaries, or reading whatever happens to strike your fancy will intersect with your life experiences to give you a flicker of inspiration.

  Activities that open your mind without focusing it too much are good for First Insight. Power walking won’t move you through First Insight, but aimless wandering walks in museums, galleries, quirky shops, and beautiful natural places will. Give yourself permission to flip through and read bits and pieces of whatever books and magazines fall your way in libraries, bookstores and waiting rooms and from friends. Open a writing book to a random page and try the first writing exercise or prompt you find.

  Product Time during First Insight can include watching TV and videos, as long as you avoid the stuff that makes your mind numb, focusing instead on stuff that makes you say, “Really? I never thought about that.” For me, programs on PBS, Discovery, the Science Channel, the History Channel and Bravo are good fodder. For you, it might be a different combo. You’ll do a lot of freewriting, journaling, clustering, and mind-mapping. If you’re not sure where to start when you’re in First Insight, use the Interest Inventory below.

  * * *

  Interest Inventory

  If you know you want to write, but don’t know what you want to write, list five of each of the following:

  hobbies, interests or things you like to do or have always wanted to try

  things you’re passionate about

  qualities or traits you value in yourself and others (e.g., honesty, courage, generosity)

  issues or situations that outrage you

  questions you’ve always wondered about

  people you admire (living or dead or fictional)

  magazines, other publications and types/topics of books you read

  groups, associations, clubs or loose affiliations you’re a member of

  things or people that caught your attention or interested you today

  topics you might want to write about someday

  groups or types of people who might be interested in these topics (Note: Some writers find that thinking about who else might be interested in a topic helps them clarify what and how they want to write. Some writers find that thinking about potential audiences too soon is overwhelming or too limiting. If thinking about audience inhibits you, skip this one.)

  Use your Product Time every day to freewrite about one of the things in any of the lists on this Interest Inventory. When you realize you want to find out more about a topic, use your Product Time to explore the topic (i.e., do some research). If your interest in the topic wears out, come back to this Interest Inventory. If your interest remains, congratulations—you’ve found a writing project.

  * * *

  Saturation

  In the second stage, you immerse yourself in data, details and facts. This is when you start looking for answers to some of the open-ended questions you asked in First Insight. You want to get as much information as you can from a variety of sources. This includes research on the subject matter you’re writing about or research to clarify what you want to write about next. It’s also research you do on the publishing end—investigating agents, publishers and publications.

  Do anything that brings in data during your Product Time in Saturation. Read everything that could be relevant: books, academic journals, diaries, journals, notes, magazines, correspondence. The Internet makes getting information easier than it’s ever been; your challenge is to sort through the information (and misinformation) the Internet can bury you in. You can interview people: in person, on the phone, via email or online chats. You can also observe people—watch how they move and interact, listen to how they talk and what they don’t say. You can conduct your own field research, questionnaires, surveys, focus groups, etc., or read through the findings of other researchers. If you’re writing memoir, you can flip through family photo albums, diaries, journals and other documents to trigger memories and associations. It’s helpful to list the questions you want to answer and to use a system to keep track of what you find and where.

  Incubation

  When all the research you’re doing starts to overwhelm you, you enter the Incubation stage. The typically dominant left hemisphere can’t keep track of all the data and details, facts and figures you’ve accumulated. You’re eager to move ahead and get to the writing, but you can’t quite figure out how it all fits together. Your right hemisphere is working to discover new associations and connections, but you’re not consciously aware of this, and it’s easy to feel frustrated with a perceived lack of progress. You may wish you could force your way through to produce something, but you can’t. If you measure your success only with external measures of production, like words or pages written, you’ll feel very discouraged, which is why incubation is often mistaken for writer’s block, when it actually is a normal part of the process.

  Incubation is about unseen growth. If you open an incubating egg prematurely to check its progress, you kill the chick. Just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean there isn’t something significant happening.

  If you think of the creative process as a jigsaw puzzle, Saturation is when you gather all the pieces of the puzzle and lay them out on the table. Incubation is when you realize just how jumbled the pieces (facts) are and begin to wonder whether you’ll ever be able to make sense of them. If you expect that you’ll instantly see how all the pieces fit together or that the puzzle will magically put itself together as you pour it out of the box, you’re going to be very frustrated. Besides, if you could immediately see how the pieces fit together, the puzzle would be so simple it would bore you. To the right hemisphere, moving the pieces around, seeing what fits where, looking for patterns and associations is the fun part.

  What you need to do in Product Time during Incubation is not going to look enough like work to satisfy the left hemisphere. This is the one stage where showing up for Product Time could well mean abandoning your usual work space to take a nap, go for a walk, work out or wander away to do something else. You need to find something to keep your left hemisphere busy enough to butt out and let your right hemisphere do the real work of this stage. During Incubation it can be very effective to combine Process and Product Time—give your hands something to manipul
ate (clay, colors, paper) and your left hemisphere will stop chattering and distracting your right hemisphere’s search for meaning. You can ask yourself questions and freewrite possible answers (but don’t expect the answers to make complete sense yet). You can cluster, brainstorm, talk to others, and try to explain what you know so far. Like First Insight, it’s not so much what you do in Incubation as how you do it: give yourself permission to not know, to aimlessly move the puzzle pieces around, and, most of all, to find ways to stay in motion while you wait.

  Illumination

  Eventually, your stumbling around in Incubation will lead you to the glory of Illumination. Illumination is everyone’s favorite stage. It’s the flash of insight when you can see how it works, the eureka moment when all the pieces fit together. It tends to be a brief flash, perhaps because it requires both left- and right-hemisphere perception and most of us are accustomed to using one or the other, not both together. Because Illumination has such a short duration, there is limited time to do much during Product Time.

  Your main task in Product Time during Illumination is to simply pay attention. If you’re writing fiction or creative nonfiction, Illumination Product Time can be letting the scene unfold in your imagination and recording a few sentence fragments that capture sensory or emotional highlights of the scene. If you’re writing poetry, it’s playing with the images, sounds, rhythms in your imagination and recording key words or phrases. If you’re writing nonfiction, it’s paying attention to how the ideas fit together and taking notes. You might have time to capture the inspiration with a freewrite, cluster or mind map. Talking to others during Illumination is not a good idea because it dissipates the creative energy and can easily distract you so much that the new aha insight slips between your fingers.