Even More Hands-on Solution to Writer’s Block

January 22, 2012

Sometimes you need an even more hands-on solution to writing resistance than picking up a pen. Sometimes you need to back away, not just from the keyboard, but from words themselves, at least for a while.

Borrowing from the storyboarding technique screenwriters use, Edwidge Danticat starts her novels with collages. After creating several collages, she uses “blue book” college exam notebooks to draft a novel before touching a computer keyboard.

Danticat says “I like the tactile process. There’s something old-fashioned about it, but what we do is kind of old-fashioned.”

Recent brain science explains why the old-fashioned tactile approach can be so effective. Sharon Begley observes “Although most of us think of motor skills and cognitive skills as like oil and water, in fact a number of studies have found that refining your sensory-motor skills can bolster cognitive ones. No one knows exactly why, but it may be that the two brain systems are more interconnected than we realize. So learn to knit, or listen to classical music, or master juggling and you might be raising your IQ.”

Almost any kind of creative play (what I call Process) can have the effect of increasing creativity and other cognitive functions. Take your pick from collage-making, doodling, painting, coloring, dancing, fooling around with a musical instrument, playing with clay or Play-Doh, making models, gardening, photography, quilting, etc.

This as-of-yet-unexplained connection between sensory-motor skills and cognitive abilities can also help explain why clustering and mind-mapping break through mental blocks to deliver creative insight. Sometimes you need the image or the sensory-motor experience before you’re ready to make words flow into sentences and paragraphs.

Stop thinking about your writing problem straight-on and sidle up to it instead. Get your body moving so your mind can wander. Let your hands move of their own volition; sometimes another part of the body has wisdom the brain hasn’t clued into yet.

The next time you’re facing writing resistance, pick up your pen or your colored pencils, markers or crayons. Or your paintbrush, scissors, glue stick, harmonica or guitar, modeling clay, knitting needles or whatever activates your sensory-motor system and makes you happy.

My favorite ways to do Process are coloring and making collages. What’s yours?

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Posted by rosannebane

Hands-on Solution for Writer’s Block

January 19, 2012

The hands-on solution to writer’s block (and other forms of writing resistance) is to literally get your hands on. Step away from the keyboard and pick up a pen.

According to Sharon Begley’s “Buff Your Brain” article in Newsweek, “Brain scans show that handwriting engages more sections of the brain than typing.”

These aren’t just any old sections of the brain being activated when you wield a pen; they’re sections vital to writing. Virginia Berninger, professor of educational psychology at the University of Washington, refers to brain scans that show “sequential finger movements activated massive regions involved in thinking, language and working memory.”

And no, using a keyboard isn’t the same as writing by hand. Berninger points out that a keyboard allows you to select a whole letter with one touch, but handwriting “requires executing sequential strokes to form each letter.” It’s the sequential finger movements that engage your brain.

After you defrost the brain freeze of writing resistance, the keyboard can be your best friend again. But before you rush back to your computer, remember that many writers write their first drafts in longhand, including JK Rowling, Stephen, King, Neil Gaiman and Tracy Chevalier.

When it comes to getting your brain engaged and your creativity flowing, the pen is mightier than the keyboard!

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The Results Are In: Inside the Writer’s Brain We Go!

October 21, 2011

Thanks to everyone who voted for a section title to replace “Brain Factoids” in the upcoming Around the Writer’s Block: Using Brain Science to Solve Writer’s Resistance.

The majority of you voted for “Inside the Writer’s Brain,” which is what I was leaning toward myself. So Inside the Writer’s Brain we go!

What you’ll find in the Inside the Writer’s Brain sections will be scintillating answers to fascinating brain-based questions like:

  • Why you need to reward yourself for writing (because when you get a reward, your brain releases dopamine and acetylcholine, which make you feel good and remember that you want to keep doing what you just did)
  • What’s a habit (a collection of neurons whose connections have been insulated with myelin to make the pathway more effective)
  • Why you need writing habits (because these insulated neural pathways are more effective and therefore become the default path)
  • Why trying to multitask is such a bad idea (because the cortex is a serial processor, not parallel processor)
  • How tracking your efforts improves your writing (the brain can only learn when you’re paying attention)
  • What self-care does to improve your writer’s brain (should you take a walk, a break or a nap?)

Please vote again: which of these or other brain-based insights would you like me to discuss in greater depth in future posts? Is there something about your brain or your writing that you’ve always wondered about? “Why do I…?”

4 Comments | Neurology of Resistance, Recognition and Rewards, Recommended Practices (Proces Self-Care and Product Time), Writing Life | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
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More Free Writing Classes!

October 4, 2011

If you’ve wondered what the heck is going on in your brain when you want to write and can’t or don’t, you’re going to love this!

I’m teaching a two-hour class called “Why Is It So Hard To Write Even When I Want To?”Absolutely free!

This and two other classes I’m teaching at Scott County libraries are part of their new “Inkslingers: Writers in the Libraries” series of free writing classes and author visits in October and November made possible with funding from the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Funding.

You have your choice of six different two-hour classes:

The Creative Process on November 16 from 6:30 to 8:30 pm at the Savage Library. Getting words on the page is essential, but there’s a lot more to writing. There are six stages in the creative process and only one involves fingers on the keyboard. Find out what these six stages are and what you need to do in each of them to complete the creative process. The class will include some in-class writing exercises. Class size is limited; registration is required – call (952-707-1770) or contact the Savage Library.

Getting Started on November 17 from 6:30 to 8:30 pm at the Shakopee Library. Do you have great ideas for stories, articles, essays— maybe even a book? Learn tips and techniques to get those ideas out of your head and onto the page. We’ll practice brainstorming, clustering, freewriting and other ways of kick-starting the writing process. You’ll also complete an interest inventory and learn about habits that will sustain your writing in the future. The class will include in-class writing exercises.
Class size is limited; registration is required – call (952-233-9590) or contact the Shakopee Library.

Why Is It So Hard to Write Even When I Want To? on November 29 from 6:30 to 8:39 pm at the Prior Lake Library. Why do nearly all writers have an embrace/avoid, push/pull relationship with writing? It’s not because we’re lazy, undisciplined or lack ambition or intelligence. It’s because we don’t have a brain—we have a brain system. In easy-to-understand terms, learn what’s going on in your brain when you want to write (or do anything else), but can’t or don’t. Most importantly, learn what you can do to move through resistance and into the writing you want to do. The class will include in-class writing exercises. Class size is limited; registration is required – call (952-447-3375) or contact the Prior Lake Library.

I hope to see you in one (or more) of these Inkslingers classes!

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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.

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

May 27, 2011

My intuition tells me there is something more significant about multitasking than just “don’t do it.” It’s about focus; it’s about the ability and freedom to choose what to pay attention to. Without that ability to focus, our struggles with writing resistance will be futile. My next couple of posts will explore this connection between multitasking, attention and writing.

Question: Why do we multitask?  Answer: Why do cats roll in catnip?

Most people started multitasking because we believed it would save time. We hoped that if we could do three or four things at once, we could keep up with the stuff we have to do and maybe have a little time left for the stuff we’d like to do.

But the research is clear: multitasking wastes time. If we want more time to write, we have to stop multitasking.

Despite the evidence, however, some people still believe that they can get more done faster by multitasking. They think that somehow they’re exempt from the negative consequences of multitasking. The truth is, “frequent multitaskers” (i.e. people who frequently try to multitask) are the most deluded about their ability to multitask.

Dangerously Deluded

In its “Digital Nation” episode, Frontline followed experiments with undergrads at MIT, arguably some of the smartest young people in the country. These students are serious multitaskers; they text messages on their smart phones while carrying on conversations via Skype and in the presence of four or five friends who are all on their phones and laptops with multiple apps open on all devices. They honestly believe they can process all this simultaneously because they are faster, smarter or just wired differently, especially compared to “older people.”

But the research on these self-declared “expert multitaskers” show that they are in fact worse on every measure. Compared to people who prefer to do one thing at a time and who rarely multitask, frequent multitaskers:

  • Take more time to shift attention from task to task
  • Make more mistakes
  • Have poorer, less organized memories of what they’ve done (and since they multitask nearly all day, they have poorer memories overall, a phenomena I call MMID, Multimedia- Multitasking-Induced Dementia)
  • Are unable to filter relevant from irrelevant information
  • Struggle to focus their attention

Everyone loses processing speed and accuracy when they try to multitask, but the more often you multitask, the slower, less accurate and more distractable you become.

The Dopamine Hit

But even when they see the results of this research, the MIT students persist in multitasking. Most people keep multitasking even after they realize it’s not working very well and even after they learn about the research that demonstrates multitasking can’t work. (Just think about the people who persist in driving while texting or using their phone.)

Why? In a word: dopamine.

When it perceives a new stimulus, the brain gives itself a hit of dopamine, the feel-good, pay-attention-to-this neurotransmitter. Every shift of attention caused by multitasking can give you a dopamine boost.

You can easily and quickly become accustomed to a squirt of dopamine every couple of minutes. You’ll feel anxious or bored when you don’t get your hit. So you seek it out. You check your email, your text messages, your Facebook page, your blog stats, etc.

You do this even though you know you should be focusing on some other task, so you tell yourself you’ll multitask “just for a minute.”

According to Clifford Nash, Communications Professor at Stanford, “We have a large and growing population of people who think the slightest hint that something interesting might be going on is like catnip. They can’t ignore it.”

Or, as we’ll see in the next post, like a marshmallow to a four-year-old. (Want a sneak preview?)

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Multitasking Kills Creativity and Causes Writer’s Block

May 20, 2011

Multitasking kills untold numbers of innocent goldfish

If you think you can carve out time for your writing by multitasking, think again. The cortex cannot truly multitask; you can pay focused, conscious attention to only one thing at a time. When you attempt to multitask, you actually shift your attention from one task to another and back again.

Every time you shift your attention, you lose processing speed and accuracy. Attempting to do multiple tasks actually takes more time – up to 50% more time – than doing those same tasks sequentially. You can make up to 50% more mistakes, some of which can be disastrous (and not only for goldfish!).

Even more significantly for writers and others who need to bring focused, engaged, creative thinking to their work, attempts to multitask fracture your thinking and splinter your ability to pay attention. Not just while you’re multitasking – the negative effects of multitasking can last for hours!

Attentional Frenzy Precludes Creativity

Multitasking causes attentional frenzy. You’re focused here, no there, no over there! Look at this, no process that, no pay attention to this! Your attention is jumping around like a spastic house fly. And in all that mental busy-ness, there’s no time to let your attention simply rest.

The brain needs down time to commit new learning to long-term memory. People who take a nap after memorizing a list of words remember significantly more than people who don’t nap. The brain also needs quiet time to make the new associations and connections that are essential to creative work.

Experiment With Your Own Attention

You can prove it to yourself. Select three or four objects on your desk or in the room. As fast as you can, look at one object, then another, then another. Focus on each object for a second or two, then randomly shift your attention to another selected object. Keep shifting for about a minute. Go ahead and try that; I’ll wait.

Do your eyes hurt? Do you feel a little dizzy or a little jittery?

Now focus your eyes on one object, then blink and let your focus go soft. Don’t worry about focusing on any particular object. In yoga, this is sometimes called “soft eyes.”  If you do this for a minute or two or more, your perspective changes. You start seeing things on the periphery more and distinguishing between foreground and background less. Something that had been unnoticed in the background might take on new significance.

Go ahead and try that; it’ll make your eyes and your brain feel better.

Soft Focus is the Source of Creativity

This soft focus with our inner eye or imagination is what gives us those joyful “a-ha” moments of creative insight. When we allow our mind to be soft but still engaged, our perspective changes. We can see new connections between ideas and make new associations. Everything clicks into place and the solution is suddenly clear. This is the heart of creativity.

We simply can’t get to that heart when our mind is jumping spastically from task to task to task or from thought to thought to thought. We can’t get there even hours after multitasking because our mind is still reeling and our attention is still shattered. We must have quiet time to restore our ability to focus softly.

This is why so many writers find writing easier in the morning – they haven’t splintered their attention yet. And why other writers find writing easier in the evening – they’ve had a chance to quiet their minds and let their inner eye go soft.

What’s your best time to write? When are you able to focus softly on your writing without distractions and interruptions? When is your mind most calm yet engaged?

And most importantly, do you preserve that best time to write for the writing that matters most to you?

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Around the Writer’s Block Class Open for Enrollment

February 25, 2011

Are you ready to stop farting around with resistance?

If you’ve enjoyed my blog or gleaned useful suggestions from it, you’re going to love the Around the Writer’s Block class!

 This class will give you:

  • A safe, supportive community with other writers who are ready to stop struggling with resistance and start writing the way they want
  • Awareness of what’s happening in your brain when you experience resistance and what you can do to change that
  • Deeper understanding of the Recommended Practices (Process, Self-Care and Product Time) and how to use these practices to solidify your writing habit
  • Weekly check-ins where you hold yourself accountable to the commitments you make to your writing practices
  • Practice identifying the different ways you resist writing so you can respond effectively and get past that resistance
  • Support and encouragement as you learn to recognize and challenge your Saboteur
  • Interactive class sessions where you’ll learn how rewards work (and when they don’t) so you can motivate yourself and how to manage Creative Polarities to get past excuses, illusions and obstacles to the writing life you want.

If you’re in the Minneapolis/St. Paul metro area, you can attend the next Around the Writer’s Block class at the Loft (Wednesdays from 5 to 7 pm, March 16 – April 20).

If you’re not in this area, send me an email and we can chat about how you and I could arrange for an AWB weekend workshop in your area or how personalized creativity coaching with me could fill the gap for you.

Entering the Flow Class Also Open for Enrollment

Not an actual class photo. We won't be entering the flow quite so literally.

If you want to learn how to apply meditation and relaxation directly to writing fiction or creative nonfiction, if you want to spend more time in the “flow state” or “writer’s trance,” Entering the Flow is the class you’re looking for.

I’ve talked about the Outline vs. Drafting Debate and Robert Olen’s Butler’s solution to the debate in previous posts. We’ll use Butler’s ideas as one of the launching points into our own discovery of the writer’s dreamspace.

This class will give you opportunities to:

  • Learn how to intentionally shift your consciousness to find your own way into the flow/writer’s trance
  • Experiment with different relaxation and meditation techniques
  • Spend time in a relaxed, meditative state recording the images you discover in your imagination with slow, easy writing that you can later expand into scenes
  • Discuss sensory-focused writing, writing rituals and routines, ego surrender and other topics
  • Benefit from the synergy of being in a room with other writers willing to become quiet, enter the trance, and follow wherever our imagination leads us.

If you’re in the Minneapolis/St. Paul metro area, you can attend the next Entering the Flow class at the Loft (Tuesdays from 10 am to noon, March 15 – April 19).

Leave a Comment » | Announcements, Neurology of Resistance, Overcoming Resistance, Recommended Practices (Proces Self-Care and Product Time), Relaxation, Writing Life | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by rosannebane

Synaptic Jazz

November 23, 2010

One of the best things about being a writer is having writer friends. This week’s guest post features one of my outstanding writer friends: Jean Cook and her Synaptic Jazz. I trust you all will enjoy it as much as I do! Please keep in mind that All Rights are Reserved on this poem. If you’d like to contact Jean about her poem, you can find her at her website.

October 28, 2010

(in honor of Rosanne’s signed book contract)

(edited version)

 Synaptic Jazz

by Jean Cook

Each neuron

in your head

aims to stop dead

your saboteur.

Ganglia thick like

Medusa’s snake hair

their dendrites lively, aware

aquiver, writhing,

release, receive enzymes

time and again and time

firing with willpower

every minute, every hour

firing, conspiring,

aspiring to inspire to aspire.

Never flogging your noggin,

snap-crackle-pop,

your impulses don’t stop

rapid fire rat-a-tat-tat

whadya think about that?

about this?

snapping across the synapse gaps

across the abyss

nerves with verve and flair

analyze, improvise

how to get from here to there,

from there to here?

Brain smiles and waves

staves off the fear

strolling la-di-da

past the amygdala.

 

A shower of brainpower

lightning paths cutting swaths

across your gray matter

connecting a smattering

of what’s mattering,

of this, of that,

so much going on under your hat

brimming full

of natural chemicals

of dopamine,

know what I mean?

Brainstorms

are the norm.

Your methodical plotting

not plodding

around the writer’s block

steady as a rock

steady as you go

the ideas flow

axon to axon, flow on

past snake brain

the electron convoy conveys

an energy load along vertebrae

neverendin’ at the tendons

now going far

going intramuscular

through bicep, tricep,

funnels into the carpal tunnel

through your finger,

through your pen

and then

ideas swirl

into the world.

Creativity,

It’s cerebral, baby.

1 Comment | Creative Flow, Neurology of Resistance | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
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