Around the Writer's Block

by Rosanne Bane

  on (number of) __________ days of the week

  on (list the days) __________

  in the (indicate morning, afternoon or evening) __________ .

  My targets are: (list number of minutes a day or total number of minutes for the week or a milestone you want to reach, such as “draft chapter four” or “revise query letter”; you can list different targets for each day or have just one target for the week or have no target at all)

  Monday: __________

  Tuesday: __________

  Wednesday: __________

  Thursday: __________

  Friday: __________

  Saturday: __________

  Sunday: __________

  Signed: __________ Date: __________

  Witnessed by: __________ Date: __________

  INQUIRY

  “If I could write anything at all, and I knew it would be successful, what would I write?”

  5

  HABIT THREE: SELF-CARE

  Success Story: You Can’t Truly Care for Others If You’re Not Caring for Yourself

  As a retired RN making writing her second career, Pauline Peterson, author of Horses for Pauline and a columnist for Horse’n Around magazine, was in the habit of taking care of others. Her patients, family, friends, even her horse had always received more time and attention than Pauline herself. She says it was in the Writing Habit class, where Self-care is recommended, expected and applauded, that she “recognized what I needed and what I could do for myself. It was the power of Self-care that got me unstuck and working regularly on my next book.”

  Pauline also sees how taking care of herself is a gift she shares with others. “As I took better care of myself, it gave others around me permission to do the same. If I start to get short-tempered with my family, I realize it’s because I haven’t done enough Self-care, and I know what to do about that before it interferes with my writing or harms my relationships.”

  Self-care

  Pauline’s experience and the Inside the Writer’s Brain sections in this chapter illustrate that Self-care is not selfish indulgence; it is vital to us as writers and as human beings. Major airlines recognize the basic logic of Self-care when they remind passengers to be sure their own oxygen mask is in place before attempting to assist others. If you pass out because you didn’t take care of yourself, you are no good to anyone else.

  It can feel selfish to make time for yourself, but it’s not. Time for yourself and time for others are opposite, but interdependent, ends of one continuum. We need to do both—getting stuck on one end serves no one. If you make time for only yourself, you are selfish. You’ll also be isolated, lonely, stale, uncreative and restless. But if you make time only for others, you’re a selfless doormat, unable to create significant work. If you lose sight of who you are, not only will you be unhappy, you can’t truly be of service to anyone. The completely selfless also end up feeling isolated, lonely, stale, as well as unappreciated.

  Your creative genius is the goose that lays the golden eggs. If you, like the shortsighted farmer in the fable, don’t care for the goose, you’ll never see another golden egg and neither will anyone else in your community. You need both time for yourself and time with others.

  Self-care is anything you do to care for yourself and to maintain your ability to write. If you’re already going to the gym to work out because you want to be physically fit, that’s a form of Self-care. Simply add the awareness that your workout keeps you creatively fit as well.

  There are many ways to care for yourself. This chapter will explore five major forms that are most beneficial to writers: adequate sleep, exercise, meditation, time to focus, and play. You don’t have to take on all five at once; start with making a habit out of one kind of Self-care. When that practice is firmly entrenched as part of your routine, you can focus on creating a habit out of another form of Self-care. After all, it’s not really caring for yourself if you work out regularly but never get enough sleep, for example. Self-care means caring for your whole self. Eventually, you’ll want to give yourself time for most, if not all, the major forms of Self-care.

  Success Story: Self-care, Not Self-indulgence

  Copywriter and novelist Laura Sommers learned to distinguish real Self-care from self-indulgence that’s disguised as Self-care. “Self-indulgence might look like Self-care on the surface,” she acknowledges, “but instead of giving me that deep sense of satisfaction that Self-care brings, it leaves me feeling flat.”

  Taking a nap, taking a break or treating yourself can be legitimate Self-care at times, but Laura observes that those kinds of things can slide into self-indulgence if she’s not paying attention. “Self-indulgence is taking a nap I don’t need instead of reading a book. Or staring at the TV for hours, thinking of numerous things I could be doing—things I always say I wish I had time to do, but now don’t seem willing to leave the couch to do. It’s feeling sorry for myself and thinking I deserve a break because I’m busy. It’s rewarding myself with junk food or dessert or wine one time too many. It’s going for the ‘quick hit’ stimuli, like shopping or rearranging furniture or writing clever emails.”

  When Laura finds herself overindulging, she asks herself why. “Usually it means it’s time to drop something unimportant to make time for something that matters, but that scares me a little.”

  True Self-care gives Laura what she needs to be the writer and artist she strives to be. “Self-care is when I truly take care of my best self. And sometimes that means I have to face my fears or create conflicts or make decisions others will question. It’s when I make the effort to go to the art show across town, or invite a friend to a concert because my husband hates classical music. It’s when I turn down a social opportunity on a busy day because I really need to run two miles, and I know I can only do one or the other. Or it’s calling a friend for lunch because she always makes me feel good about my creativity. It’s not just taking care of my dear self in a superficial way—that’s the path that puts me on the couch staring at the TV. It’s knowing my true self, and doing what my true self needs to thrive.”

  INSIDE THE WRITER’S BRAIN: THE POWER OF DOING NOTHING

  Studies show that when rats experience something new, their brains create new patterns of activity. But to create a long-term memory—in other words, to really learn from the experience—the rats must take a break. Apparently learning, for both rats and humans, happens not so much in the moment of the experience as in the rehearsing and reinforcing of the new neural patterns that occur after the experience.

  The New York Times quoted Dr. Loren Frank, assistant professor of physiology at the University of California, who specializes in learning and memory, as saying, “Almost certainly, downtime lets the brain go over experiences it’s had, solidify them and turn them into permanent long-term memories.” Frank believes that when you constantly stimulate your brain, “you prevent this learning process.”1

  This much-needed downtime is a bonus you’ll gain in addition to the unique benefits found in each of the five types of Self-care we’ll discuss in this chapter.

  ADEQUATE SLEEP

  Success Story: Perchance to Achieve a Dream

  Lisa B., an accomplished children’s author with more than forty books to her credit, wanted desperately to write a YA novel. And desperate was how she felt about it—until a routine doctor’s appointment revealed that she had sleep apnea. Within a month of getting her sleep machine and hence the sleep she needed, Lisa noticed the change in her writing. “The block I had around writing fiction for older kids just melted away. I know that finally getting the sleep I needed was a huge part of that.”

  INSIDE THE WRITER’S BRAIN: SLEEP ON IT

  A sleep-deprived brain is a creatively impaired brain. Sleep deprivation has devastating consequences for the whole body, and for the brain in particular: memory, mood, alertness and the a
bility to focus attention, decision making, learning, logical reasoning, creativity and motivation are all impaired. In addition to these cognitive losses, sleep deprivation disrupts hormone balances, depletes the immune system, interferes with metabolism so that the body loses muscle and gains fat, accelerates aging and increases the likelihood of diabetes, heart disease, depression, anxiety disorders and serious, even fatal, accidents.2, 3

  In addition to reversing all the physical and cognitive costs of sleep deprivation, getting enough quality sleep improves both the divergent and convergent thinking required for creativity. For all these reasons, sleeping well reduces resistance.

  WRITER’S APPLICATION: HOW MUCH IS ENOUGH?

  The amount of sleep we need to perform at our best varies widely among individuals and even varies throughout one person’s life. Some studies4 suggest that it’s less a matter of how long you sleep than it is a matter of how many sleep cycles you complete. A sleep cycle has five phases: 1) still conscious, but body is relaxed and breathing slowed, primarily alpha waves; 2) light sleep, primarily theta waves; 3) deep sleep, primarily delta waves; 4) REM sleep, dreaming, primarily theta and alpha waves (if alpha waves are absent, dreams won’t be recalled); 5) light sleep, primarily theta waves, can be easily awakened by environmental stimuli.

  According to Dr. Pierce J. Howard, author of The Owner’s Manual for the Brain, one of the most important things you can do to improve your sleep is to “organize your time so that you are able to wake up naturally, in a way that does not disrupt a sleep cycle.”5 Use your alarm clock as a backup only; visualize the time you want to wake up and set your alarm for fifteen to thirty minutes later than that.

  Some people truly cannot do this, because their job or family situation requires them to wake up at a time that is not natural for them. But before you surrender to the inevitability of unnatural sleep and the toll it will continue to take on your health and well-being as well as your writing, challenge yourself to see how far you can adjust your schedule to accommodate your natural sleep patterns. You will be much more effective during your waking hours.

  It’s unfortunate that our culture does not respect our need for natural sleep cycles. Many experts agree that sleep deficit is a serious and growing health problem in the United States. The prevailing assumption that the need to sleep is a sign of weakness and that depriving yourself of sleep is a virtue could not be more untrue.

  To find out what’s natural and effective sleep for you, you might want to start a sleep journal to observe how much you sleep, how many times you woke up during the night (to indicate how many sleep cycles you complete), how you felt when you woke up, and how easily and freely you wrote the next day.

  Practice good sleep habits: go to bed at approximately the same time and get the same amount of sleep each night; make sure your bedroom is free of lights and sounds that could interrupt your sleep (even with your eyes closed, ambient light can disrupt your body’s clock); don’t exercise for several hours before bedtime; have milk or dairy or a light carbohydrate snack before bed; avoid caffeine or artificial sweeteners for several hours before bed; drink alcohol moderately or not at all.

  If these suggestions don’t help, consult a sleep specialist or go to a sleep lab. Visit the American Sleep Association’s website at http://www.sleepassociation.org for more information.

  INSIDE THE WRITER’S BRAIN: DREAM MEMORIES, DREAM INVENTIONS

  We know we need sleep, but we don’t know exactly why or what exactly the brain is doing during sleep. Scans show that the brain is amazingly active while we sleep. In fact, with the exception of the deepest parts of non-REM (nondreaming, phase three) sleep, the brain is more active while we sleep than when we’re awake.6

  Some research suggests that while our body rests in sleep, the brain is busy rehearsing what we learned during the day, improving and solidifying that learning by repeating the patterns we learned during the day hundreds, even thousands of times. The brain does this during REM (dreaming) sleep in short bursts of neural activity at extreme frequencies called sleep spindles. If our sleep is interrupted while a particular pattern is being rehearsed, we do not form a new memory.

  Referencing psychology professor James B. Maas, Pierce J. Howard writes, “Without REM sleep and this spindling process, memories dissipate. So if you spend good money learning a new tennis stroke and fail to get a natural night’s sleep afterwards, Maas says it is like having never had the lesson. You may remember the elements of the new stroke from an academic perspective, but the absence of spindling fails to convert the motor neural patterns into long-term memory.”7

  Sleep is also when the brain makes new creative associations and connections, as evidenced by so many creative breakthroughs that came to writers, scientists and inventors while dreaming, napping or in a hypnagogic (sleeplike) state. Examples include Kubla Khan, Sophie’s Choice, Frankenstein, the periodic table, the structure of the benzene ring, Einstein’s theory of relativity, and the sewing machine, among others. Thomas Edison is well-known for napping with ball bearings in his hands; as he relaxed, he would drop the ball bearings, the noise would wake him, and he would record whatever insight he had in that moment.

  In terms of brain waves, peak creative experiences are much closer to the brain wave patterns of sleep than those of being awake. Sleep gives us the opportunity to incubate ideas. While our conscious mind is asleep, the unconscious is free to explore new combinations and possibilities. As mentioned in chapter four, napping is an appropriate form of Product Time when you’re in the Incubation stage.

  EXERCISE

  Success Story: On the Move

  As a copywriter, novelist, musician, visual artist, gardener, householder and business owner, Laura Sommers is usually on the move pursuing personal interests and professional commitments. But she still makes time for exercising a conscious choice.

  “I’ve tried both ways,” she says, “and exercising is better than not exercising. When I exercise, I not only feel better in my body and more in the moment, I also avoid the joint stiffness and muscle tightening that make it hard for a writer to sit in a chair for long periods. The most important thing about exercise, by far, is having the ability to start up again when you stop, without judgment or concern that you’ve ‘lost it.’ That’s the difference between the lifelong exerciser and the binge exerciser. It’s also the difference between a writer who writes regularly and someone who writes once or twice a year when inspiration strikes.”

  Laura continues. “I also have the advantage of a husband who is as passionate about exercising every day as I am about writing. Rather than being jealous of his activity or his physique, I let him be my inspiration to keep at it. I try to see my writing friends the same way. Their activity inspires me to exercise my talent as a writer.”

  Laura has a variety of exercise options to choose from, including tennis, bicycling, running and walking. “Tennis is great, because when I’m in the middle of a lesson, I’m not thinking about anything else. But after the lesson, I’ll see how so much of what I’m learning about tennis relates to learning my craft as a writer, in an oblique sort of way. For example, my instructor teaches the idea that your hand knows how to hit the ball—if you just keep the racquet in the right alignment. From there, it’s just practicing keeping the racquet face in the right place as you hit the ball a variety of ways. It’s a great message about trusting your instincts, as a tennis player and as a writer. Your writer’s hand knows what it wants to do . . . you just have to give it the tools and the practice to do it.”

  For Laura, exercise burns calories and negative mental states. “It always restores me. I guess you could say I have faith in the power of exercise to keep me physically and mentally healthy. I don’t always feel like taking it on or making time for it, but I always feel better after. I sleep better, I breathe better, and I feel more confident about everything, including my writing.”

  INSIDE THE
WRITER’S BRAIN: PUMP UP YOUR BODY, PUMP UP YOUR BRAIN

  Exercise doesn’t improve just your body; it improves brain function. According to Dr. John J. Ratey, author of Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain, the reason it feels so good to move your body is because it helps the brain reach peak efficiency. “In my view, this benefit of physical activity is far more important—and fascinating—than what it does for the body. Building muscles and conditioning the heart and lungs are essentially side effects. I often tell my patients that the point of exercise is to build and condition the brain.”8

  Movement is essential to brain function. Multiple studies have shown that physical exercise improves creativity, memory, reasoning, attention, motivation and problem solving. Ratey cites numerous studies that explain the biochemical reasons exercise has such pervasive, positive effects on the brain. It begins with the fact that physical activity increases blood flow to the brain. The brain is a glutton for glucose and oxygen, using up to 20 percent of the body’s energy but representing only 3 percent of the body’s overall mass. Both glucose and oxygen are a function of blood flow; the better the blood flow, the better the brain works.9

  Exercise also increases BDNF (brain-derived neurotrophic factor), what Ratey calls “Miracle-Gro for the brain” because it significantly increases the growth of new neurons and improves their functioning, which in turn improves learning and memory.10 The presence of BDNF near the synapses also brings in other protein factors—IGF-1, VEGF, and FGF-2—that cause a variety of molecular changes that improve learning and memory.11

  In addition to increasing the number of neurons, exercise improves the connections between them. Studies at the University of British Columbia show that mice that choose to run on their exercise wheels have significantly more dendrites than mice that don’t. More dendrites means more connections between neurons, and the more connected a brain is, the better it functions overall. (Interestingly, mice that are forced to exercise don’t show the same improvements as mice that choose to exercise. Fortunately for them, most mice are smarter than humans in this regard and don’t have to be forced to exercise.)12