Seeing Again… and Again and Again

January 25, 2012

Today's Guest Author: Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew

I’m delighted to introduce today’s Guest Author: Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew. Elizabeth is the author of Writing the Sacred Journey, Swinging on the Garden Gate, and On the Threshold: Home, Holiness, and Hardwood. I’ll give the rest of Elizabeth’s bio after she’s charmed you with the post (it’ll mean more to you then). 

I just came across some great wisdom: “Resistance always comes from the desire to not see. When we feel resistance in any form, it’s because we haven’t fully committed to seeing what’s true.” Thanks, Rosanne! You’ve put your finger on why we writers resist revision so fiercely.

The truth is multifaceted. It usually sits smack in the middle of a paradox. When you peel away the top layer of a truth—that is, when you look below the facts—you find layer upon layer of emotional resonance. The only way to find the truth is to look again…and again, and again.

This is why authors claim that writing IS revision: To see the truth in our stories, we must revisit them.

Nonetheless, all writers to varying degrees resist revision. Beginning writers resist revision with special vehemence; after all, they’ve overcome their resistance to writing an initial draft, they’ve gotten their butt in the chair, they’ve sweat blood, they’ve made glorious discoveries, and they’ve arrived! Of course the ego latches on to that initial version of the story. We love an easy truth.

Intermediate writers and writers with several drafts under our belts resist revision because, dang-it-all, we’ve already done so much work! The bit of complexity those first revisions add to a draft bolster our sense of accomplishment. We want the satisfaction of completion. Or, truth be told, we don’t want to see our work’s remaining flaws.

Despite being obnoxiously enthusiastic about revision, I groan at the thought of my upcoming conversation with my agent when she will suggest revising my novel—for the fourth time since we signed our contract. And that’s after five years of work on my own. If a kernel of unseen truth is still hiding in that story waiting for me to peel back the film from my eyes, I’m clueless about where to find it. As much as I’ll resist my agent’s suggestions, I’m also grateful for her sharp eyes and willingness to tell me what she sees.

The gift of writing is language’s ability to gather many layers of seeing into one place. Ever read a memoir and wonder how the author possibly remembered all those details? Ever read a brilliant bit of exposition and feel awed by the author’s smarts or skills with language? Most authors are not unduly brilliant or gifted; they’ve simply had the stick-to-it-iveness and the humility to re-see their story. When we read a beautiful work, we gaze through layer upon layer of drafting. The page can hold multiple insights simultaneously and when we are guided by the page, so can we. This layering is what makes literature. The capacity to sit with a manuscript, re-seeing the content and reworking the language, is what makes an author.

The good news is that nothing is more creative than revision. Seeing again is, in my mind, the ultimate creative act because it not only helps our work grow, it helps us grow. Perhaps our resistance has little to do with writing and plenty to do with how we inhabit the world—how willing we are to see what’s true.

And vice-versa: Writing, and especially revising, can facilitate our seeing along with our ability to inhabit our lives fully. With intention, revision can be an opportunity to deepen our experience of being human and our capacity to be truth-tellers.

Feel a little less resistance to revision or at least understand why you’d want to be less resistant? Check out Elizabeth’s Loft class Form and Function: Structure in Creative Nonfiction (starts February 21st). You can find more of Elizabeth’s insight at her blog and her websites www.spiritualmemoir.com or www.elizabethjarrettandrew.com/

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Posted by rosannebane

Tricks of Tracking #3: Set, Ready, Go!

December 27, 2011

Your tracking system should highlight two questions: “What will I do?” (as you set your intention) and “What did I do?” (after you go into action).

Even though your tracking system may not highlight it, the “ready” between the “set” and the “go” is equally important.

Set Yourself!

At the beginning of the week, set your intentions in whatever tracking chart, table or tool you’re using. For each day of the coming week, record what you are committing to do (for Process, Self-Care or Product Time or some other activity).

Be sure to set zero intentions on your days off; for example, record “0 minutes for Process” on the days you don’t intend to do Process. That way when you do 0 minutes on that day, you know you’ve honored your intention (not “slacked off” or “missed” or any other pejorative phrase your Saboteur might try to use against you.)

Setting intention is vital. They say the road to hell is paved with good intentions, but the road to limbo is paved with no intentions. As the Caterpillar tells Alice in Wonderland, “If you don’t know where you are going, it really doesn’t matter which road you take.”

Ready Yourself!

When you know where you want to go and what you intend to do, you need to prepare yourself to go there and do that. Make sure you have the resources you’ll need.

Reserve time in your calendar to do what you commit to.

Make sure you have the supplies – it’s pretty hard to honor your commitment to play with clay for 15 minutes for Process on Tuesday, for example, if you don’t have any clay to play with. You either need to get clay before Tuesday or change your intention to a Process activity you already have supplies for.

Give yourself enough options to be flexible, but not so many options you don’t know where to start. Have maybe three or four things to play with for Process, but don’t spend all your Process time wandering around trying to figure out what to play with. Keep in mind that if you’re sick or injured, what you do for Self-Care needs to change (from working out to taking a nap for example). Remember that any activity that needs to be done to complete a writing project counts as Product Time.

Go Track Yourself!

Ideally, your next step is to do what you intended to do (and as you develop and strengthen your habits, you will do what you intend more and more often). Whether you honor the commitment or not, record what you actually did right after you do it. If you don’t do anything, record “0 minutes” at the end of the day.

Be specific and factual. (“Tuesday: Played with clay for 15 minutes” for example or “Tuesday: Spent 5 minutes looking for clay, didn’t find any.”) As we’ll explore in the upcoming Tricks of Tracking #4, it’s vital to focus on facts and avoid judgment.

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Posted by rosannebane

Stood Up!

December 8, 2011

Have you ever been stood up? Or waited so long for someone to show up for a date or meeting that you feared you were being stood up?

At first, we get irritated, “Why is he always late?” Then we get nervous, “What if something happened to her?” Then we go back to being mad, “This is so rude and inconsiderate.” We ratchet the anger up every couple of minutes and fantasize the scolding and withering comments we’ll deliver when the other person finally shows up. Underneath the anger, we’re scared, sad and afraid we’ve been rejected and that other people will see us waiting and think we’re pathetic losers.

As rotten as it feels to be stood up, just imagine how bad it is to stand yourself up. On the surface, that might not make sense; you can’t stand yourself up. When you change your plans, you know it. You don’t have to explain it to yourself. Even if you forget an appointment with yourself, it’s not as if there’s some part of you sitting in a restaurant somewhere waiting for you to show up.

Except there is.

Standing Yourself Up Causes Writer’s Block

When you promise yourself you’ll show up for your Product Time, Process or Self-Care and then blow off that appointment to do something else, there is a part of you that feels disappointed and let down. And it’s the part of you that’s essential for writing.

So you shouldn’t be surprised if you don’t where to start the next time you actually do show up for writing. A lot of blank mind syndrome and I-don’t-know-what-to-write angst is self-generated.

As Normal Mailer points out in The Spooky Art: 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 are, in effect, contracting to pick up such valuables at a given time. ‘Count on me,’ you are saying to a few forces below: ‘I will be there to write.’ The point is that 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.”

Note that your unconscious, the source of all your imagination and innovation, withdraws. And no wonder. Wouldn’t you stop believing in you after all the promises you’ve broken?

Mailer warns, “If you fail to show up in the morning after you vowed that you would be at your desk as you went to sleep last night, then you will walk around with ants in your brain. Rule of thumb: Restlessness of mind can be measured by the number of promises that remain unkept.”

Mailer offers hope, but you have to earn it.

“But if you subject yourself to this impost [sic] upon yourself, this diktat [sic] to be dependable, then after a period of time – it can take weeks, or more – the unconscious, nursing its disappointment, may begin to trust you again.”

You must re-earn trust in yourself and from your unconscious. To do so, you must honor your commitments to yourself. You must show up when you say you will No Matter What! Mailer advises that it may take weeks. Why should your unconscious quickly give up its treasures to you when you’ve been so ungrateful and inconsistent?

You have to be willing to show up even when you feel like you have nothing to write. You show up and wait. You refrain from ditching out early. If you promised yourself 15 minutes, you remain available to your writing for the full 15 minutes; you don’t wander off to see who’s sent you an email or text message.

What makes the 15 Magic Minutes work is that you commit to showing up for those small, regular sessions No Matter What! You show up every time you say you will no matter what else is going on that day. This consistency builds a habit, or in brain science terms, a new neural pathway for writing.

But more importantly, showing up when you say you will allows you to forgive yourself for all the promises you made in the past to write but didn’t keep. You learn to trust yourself again.

When you finally 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.

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Posted by rosannebane

What Are You Thankful For?

November 23, 2011

Now that's Resistance!

As a writer, what do you give thanks for? Your computer? Teachers who taught you to read and write? Writers who inspire you? Your vision and the flexibility of your fingers and brain?

Can you see how resistance, even full-fledged block, might be something to be thankful for?

When we feel resistance, we both want and don’t want to write, usually because we’re afraid. Or we want to write, but there is something holding us back.

The fact that you still want to write shows your courage and the depth of your creativity. The fact that you need to move through resistance to write shows that what you’re writing is worthwhile because it demands you step beyond your comfort zone (and thus grow as a human being).

Respect your resistance. Consider what your resistance has to tell you. Usually we’re resistant because something vital is missing – time, inspiration, research, reassurance, support, witnesses, illumination, respect. Ask your resistance what you need to move forward and give yourself that (even if it seems silly or irrational).

Give thanks for your resistance. It is a normal, natural part of a writer’s life. Give thanks for the insight and courage you’ve been given to move through resistance, which you’ve also been given. Give thanks for the Divine light shining within that drives your desire to write.

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Posted by rosannebane

Focus, People, Focus!

November 18, 2011

We live in a culture of sound bites, text messages, Tweets and bullet points. A Facebook status update or an email that’s longer three sentences raises our eyebrows and creates judgments about how long-winded the author is.

There are times when brevity is the soul of wit, but there also times when brevity reveals the absence of wit.

Your Brain: Use It or Lose It

What we know about brain plasticity warns us that relying so exclusively on short, instantaneous and disposable messages will change how we think. In the moment, what we think determines what we communicate, but in the long run, what we communicate will determine how we can think. If all you give your brain is short and simple, it won’t be long before your brain can’t handle involved and complex.

We are losing our capacity to sustain focused attention. If we can’t focus long enough to thoroughly think about and analyze complex situations, we won’t be able to solve complicated problems. (And we are facing some whoppers of complicated problems.)

Writers Change the World

We can change this dangerous trend. We start by changing ourselves. We start by giving ourselves – as a form of Self-care and an act of Cultural Revolution – time to focus our attention.

For at least an hour a day, we can refuse to think in bullet points. We can refrain from fracturing our focus with constant interruptions – we turn the phone off, we wean ourselves from TV and Satellite Radio and other media, we stop stuffing ourselves with the mental junk food of email, Facebook, Twitter, eBay and countless other electronic distractions every 10 minutes.

We stop ingesting information and reflect on what we’ve consumed so far. We ponder. We consider. We mull. We stop rushing around in the world. More importantly, we stop rushing around inside our own heads. We let our brain slow enough to allow our thoughts to go deep.

Restore Your Focus

Meditation is one form of focus, and one of the benefits of mediation is that it restores our capacity for reflective, nuanced contemplation. Walking my dogs in the morning without another person to talk to is one way I focus. I get an awful lot of writing done during my morning walks.

Relaxing in a hot bath, hot tub or sauna is another way to focus. Reading a book or a magazine article that’s more than 2 paragraphs long challenges and stretches our ability to focus. Reading printed copy is a different, more focused cognitive activity than reading electronic copy. Reading on the internet does allow you to link to related stories and videos, but that ability to jump around scatters your focus and impairs your comprehension.

And scary as it may sound, just sitting without any input at all (no electronic media, no printed words, no conversation) is a powerful to focus your attention. Listen to the ambient sounds of the world around you. Listen to your own thoughts. Filter out the distracting noises of traffic and the distraction of your monkey-mind and ego-based anxieties so you can hear yourself think for a change.

Please share: do you consciously restore your attention and ability to focus? How?

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Posted by rosannebane

NaNo or Not, You Need Your Sleep!

November 1, 2011

Whether you’ve just signed yourself up to write a novel in a month or you’re facing other writing challenges as we move into the winter holidays, you may be tempted to skimp on sleep so you can keep up with a schedule that always seems to get frenzied this time of year. Don’t!

The sleep-deprived brain is incapable of creativity. Sleep deprivation interferes with both the convergent and divergent thinking required for creative thinking. It also impairs nearly every other cognitive function: memory, mood, alertness, decision-making, learning, logical reasoning, and motivation.

If that’s not enough to scare you into turning out the lights in time to get the sleep you need, consider this nightmare scenario: consistently denying your body sleep makes you more likely to get sick (because your immune system is compromised) and causes you to lose muscle and gain fat!

Scientists aren’t exactly sure what the brain does when we sleep or why we need sleep. But it is clear that sleep allows the brain solidify what it learned during the day and to make new creative associations and connections. Dreaming, napping or being in a hypnagoic (sleeplike) state is credited as the source of many creative and scientific breakthroughs: Kubla Khan, Sophie’s Choice, Frankenstein, the periodic table, the structure of the benzene ring, Einstein’s theory of relativity and the sewing machine, to name a few.

Sleep is an essential component in the self-care that supports a writer. Be sure you practice good sleep hygiene:

  • go to bed at the same time and get the same amount of sleep every night
  • eliminate light and noise distractions in your bedroom
  • watch what you eat and drink before bed
  • avoid computer monitors and TVs before sleep (the light these devices emit suppresses the natural production of melatonin and disrupts your circadian rhythms).

I’m fascinated by how insomnia parallels writer’s block. In both you want to change your state of consciousness and can’t because you keep thinking intrusive thoughts. Next time, I’ll review how the solutions for insomnia can be adapted to curing writer’s block.

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Posted by rosannebane

Please Vote!

October 10, 2011

Which do you think is more intriguing?

I want your opinion. My upcoming book, Around the Writer’s Block: Using Brain Science to Solve Writer’s Resistance, will include sections that show how relevant and useful it is for writers to understand the brain and neuroscience research. The information in these sections is tailored for readers who are writers like you, not scientists.

I had titled these sections “Brain Factoids” because I wanted them to sound light and accessible (not too academic). But my editor said that, to her, “factoid” implied optional reading and that’s definitely not what these sections are.

So I need a replacement for “Brain Factoid” and I’d appreciate your perspective. Please vote!

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Posted by rosannebane

Real Revision

September 2, 2011

I just re-read my last post and I think I should have made this clearer: don’t resist revising; good writing comes from rewriting.

The self-imposed demand to churn out one or two posts a week means I don’t always give myself enough time to see the connections I’m failing to make. Of course, I can write another post, like this one, to explain a previous post, but I make an effort to avoid this because it’s not respectful of your time. It’s my responsibility to revise before publishing a post. Because I was in a hurry, I couldn’t see what you probably saw; I saw what I thought you’d see, what I wanted you to see.

That’s why it’s called revision; because it requires vision. As I suggested in my previous post (or at least thought I was suggesting), you can’t revise your writing and begin to see new possibilities for what the piece can become until you see and accept what the piece currently is. You have to see what’s really there before you can change what’s there. And seeing what’s really there is the hard part.

As I’m demonstrating here, (yeah, that’s what I was doing, creating a “teachable moment,” intentionally making a mistake so you can learn from it, yeah, that’s it) time gives you perspective.

The day you finish a new piece, it looks perfectly clear, concise and maybe even cleverly humorous or particularly insightful (if it didn’t, you wouldn’t think it was complete). When you’ve just finished, you see in the writing what you intended to put in writing. But a day or two later, you’ve forgotten what you intended and this allows you to see your writing as a reader, not the writer. You can see that there’s something missing or something you’ve over explained or something that can be tweaked.

If the passage of time doesn’t help us see the warts on our darlings and we think the darling piece is ready for the world, we need outside help. We need readers who are kind enough to both appreciate what’s good in the writing and help us see what’s not working for them. These readers are the friends who don’t let us go out in public with spinach between our teeth.

Being able to shift perspective to see your writing as a reader sees it is the essence of rewriting. Re-vision is seeing through someone else’s eyes.

I think this is clearer now, but if not, please let me know that I’ve still got spinach between my teeth. Thanks.

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Posted by rosannebane

Step Away From the Marshmallow Part 2

June 2, 2011

Don't think about the marshmallow!

In more recent versions of the Marshmallow Test, Walter Mischel tells children to pretend the marshmallow is only a picture of a marshmallow or a fluffy cloud. The children who employ their imagination could wait three times longer than kids who didn’t use their imagination.

“Once you realize that will power is just a matter of learning how to control your attention and thoughts, you can really begin to increase it,” Mischel observes.

Habits More Powerful than Will Power

In The Social Animal, David Brooks explains that children who could delay eating the marshmallow were able to trigger what he calls “cool ways” of perceiving the marshmallow. He writes “The children who could not [delay eating the marshmallow] triggered hot ways: they could only see it as the delicious temptation it really was. Once those in the latter group engaged these hot networks in their brain, it was all over. There was no way they were not going to pop the marshmallow into their mouths.”

Brooks explains “The implication of the marshmallow experiment is that self-control is not really about iron willpower mastering hidden passions. The conscious mind simply lacks the strength and awareness to directly control unconscious processes. Instead, it’s about triggering…People with self-control and self-discipline develop habits and strategies that trigger the unconscious processes that enable them to perceive the world in productive and far-seeing ways.”

A commitment to show up for 15 Magic Minutes of Product Time five times a week is one of those habits that trigger unconscious assumptions and associations. People who write regularly are far more likely to perceive themselves as writers and to perceive writing time as a necessity, not a luxury. They are more likely to focus on their writing, not on their resistance.

You Can Choose Your Thoughts – Unless You Multitask Too Much

Research at University of Michigan with adults who faced the marshmallow challenge as children shows that “high delayers” (adults who could delay gratification when they were children) are better at focusing their attention on two words they are asked to remember and away from two words they are asked to forget. “High delayers” choose what to focus their attention on.

Frequent multitaskers, on the other hand, are terrible at choosing what to pay attention to. They are easily distracted and attend to whatever is new, whether that is something they planned to notice and respond to or not.

As Stanford professor Clifford Nash says, “They are suckers for irrelevancy. Everything distracts them.”

Researchers are careful to point out that without longitudinal studies, we can’t assign causality. That is, we can’t say for certain whether multitasking causes the decreased capacity to control attention. But I think it’s a safe bet that it does. Research has shown again and again that the brain is plastic and changes in response to what we experience.

When you multitask, you’re looking for the dopamine hit that something new will give you. You are essentially training your brain to constantly shift focus and to pay attention to everything. You lose your ability to sort relevant from irrelevant, meaningful from meaningless. You lose the ability to focus your attention for any length of time, which is essential to analyzing information and making the new connections and associations that are at the heart of creativity.

It's your brain. What do you want to teach it?

Create Your Perception Triggers aka Habits

The best thing you can do for yourself as a writer is to create habits that support you in regular writing sessions where you focus only on your writing. Turn everything else off when you write. Stop trying to slip writing in when you get “extra time” or as you’re doing something else. Give your writing the focused, scheduled time it and you deserve.

Develop the habits, strategies and practice that will, as Brooks says, “trigger unconscious processes that enable you to perceive the world in productive ways.”

Process, Self-Care and Product Time are those kinds of habits. You can learn more about these habits by exploring other past posts (just click on Recommended Practices in the Categories box on the right) and subscribing to this blog. If you want more one-on-one encouragement, support and accountability, I invite you to my Writing Habit and Around the Writer’s Block classes. Or check out creativity coaching with me or another coach.

Find your ways to step away from the marshmallow.

1 Comment | General, Neurology of Resistance, Overcoming Resistance, Recommended Practices (Proces Self-Care and Product Time) | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by rosannebane

Step Away From the Marshmallow and No One Gets Writer’s Block

May 31, 2011

Have you seen the Marshmallow Test? Four-year-olds are given a marshmallow and told that they can eat the marshmallow whenever they want, but if they wait until the researcher comes back, they can have a second marshmallow.

The videos are sometimes funny, sometimes poignant as the kids devise different strategies to avoid the temptation or delay getting the treat. As it turns out, whether the kids see the task as avoiding temptation or delaying a treat may be the essential factor that determines not only their success in the experiment, but their success throughout their lives.

Two out of three kids eat the marshmallow within minutes, sometimes within seconds. One out three are able to delay eating the marshmallow long enough to earn the promised second marshmallow. Years later, the kids who could delay did much better on their SATs (an average of 210 points better), got along better with peers, have fewer behavior problems, were overall happier and more successful.

Is Will Power Key to Success?

On the surface it might appear that kids who have will power are more likely to succeed, so the corollary to writing is that writers who have self-discipline will be better equipped to deal with resistance (or even experience less resistance altogether). But this isn’t about will power, at least not will power as most people think about it. This is about attention (and it’s this attention connection that brings this whole thing back to multitasking).

According to Walter Mischel, lead researcher in the original Marshmallow Experiments at Stanford, “What we’re really measuring with the marshmallows isn’t will power or self-control. It’s much more important than that. This task forces kids to find a way to make the situation work for them. They want the second marshmallow, but how can they get it? We can’t control the world, but we can control how we think about it.”

We want more writing time, but how can we get it?

It’s All About Attention

Don't look at the marshmallow! Don't even think about the marshmallow!

The kids who couldn’t wait to eat the marshmallow focused their attention on it. They seemed to think that the marshmallow was the problem, a temptation to be avoided.

The kids who were able to delay did not focus on the marshmallow; they covered their eyes, pushed the marshmallow out of sight, sang songs and tried other tactics to not think about the marshmallow.

Writers who can’t get time for their writing typically focus their attention on the resistance they feel, the rejection they fear, what their Saboteur is telling them or all the other things they need to do before they can write.

Writers who overcome resistance find ways to not think about reasons not to write.

Are you focusing on the marshmallow-reasons not to write or have you found ways to focus only on the writing itself? Please share your tricks for keeping your attention on your writing instead of on your resistance.

The next post will bring all this back to multitasking and its effects on attention and writing.

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Posted by rosannebane

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