What do you do when there's nothing to do?

Pam McAlister, my friend, fellow writer and former student, sent an article from Southern Living with this observation;

“I thought you might enjoy this little piece on piddling. Reminds me of my wrestling with what IS process and   what ain’t…”

Because the author of the article, Rick Bragg, gives such a charming description of the attitude that is at the heart of Process, today’s post consists of the intro above and an enthusiastic invitation to read The Fine Art of Piddling.

After you read the article, I invite you to go piddle yourself. Or if that phrase makes you think you need to invest in Depends, go play with Process.

Here’s my usual invitation to comment: What you do when you’re piddling? Is that the same as Process for you?

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/

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?

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!

Savor Life collage by Rosanne Bane

On New Year’s Eve, I walked a labyrinth while meditating on what I wanted to let go of and what I wanted to embrace in 2012. At first, I thought “I want to stop being so reactive. I want to respond to difficult people and situations with equanimity.” Then I thought “Equanimity is all well and good, but it could get a little boring. I want more than equanimity – I want to savor life.”

Savoring life will enrich my writing (how can we expect to write well if we’re not paying attention), improve my health and deepen my relationships and sense of wel-lbeing.

So I’ve been thinking of 2012 as the Year to Savor Life. But I may have to rethink that.

As It Turns Out…

Savoring, it turns out, is a lot of work.

Yesterday, I decided that I would not only eat my breakfast mindfully (which I talked about in the Mindful Eating = Mindful Writing post), I would savor life by mindfully eating anything I put in my mouth. That meant I needed to turn off the TV every time I ate a corn chip. Step away from the computer for lunch. Close the book and put away my collage-making or writing to eat a snack. It meant I had to refrain from everything else and focus on the food I was eating.

Food, it turns out, is not as interesting as I thought. Paying attention to food is the opposite of what I’ve done nearly all my life. I’ve used food as a way to numb out and be intentionally unconscious. I used food to go to sleep even when my eyes were open. It’s my own little “zombie-Rosanne-making” technique that I discovered when I was 12 years old and my dad died.

After I finished eating breakfast mindfully, paying attention to each bite and swallow, part of my brain was jumpy from the lack of distraction. I was going through “distraction withdrawal”. Another part of my brain was exquisitely satisfied though. I suspect this part of my brain was the driving force for both the urge to write and my showing up to satisfy that urge.

Hardest Game in Town

As one of my mentors was fond of saying, “Being conscious is the hardest game in town.” It doesn’t matter what you choose to pay attention to – focusing your attention is hard work.

The upside is that no matter what you choose to pay attention to, you get the benefits of that effort in all areas of your life – including your writing. The more you practice paying attention, the easier it becomes to pay attention. (The reverse of this is also true, the more you splinter your attention, the harder it is to pay attention when you want to.)

As you learn to sustain your attention and be conscious for longer periods of time, your thinking gets clearer, steadier and more creative. I’ve learned that developing our capacity for conscious attention reduces writing resistance and gives us the strength to get through the resistance when it does arise.

But there is no easy way to gain these payoffs. The only way to get the benefits of paying attention is to pay attention.

Who Do I Think I’m Kidding?

I’m waking up to the fact that “I want to savor life!” was a euphemism my spirit used to lure my ego into trying consciousness. Sneaky bastard.

And then ego-me went and told everyone “2012 is the year I savor life,” so now I’m committed. At least until everyone forgets the whole “New Year’s resolutions, brand new year, new start, new goals” thing, my Saboteur whispers. If my Saboteur has its way, I’ll be back to shoving food into my mouth with my left hand while my right hand is clicking the TV remote by February. My Saboteur has used lured me into this behavior as a starting point for significant writing resistance in the past.

I don’t intend to let my Saboteur have its way. I’m sure I’ll forget the commitment to eat mindfully sometimes, perhaps even rebel against the commitment from time to time. (Thinking “Who do I think I am, telling me what to do?” is a sure sign the Saboteur is trying to mess me up.)

When that happens, I’ll be compassionate with myself. I’ll acknowledge that paying attention is hard work and remember I don’t have to be perfect, just willing to start over. Like I do in meditation, I’ll redirect my attention back to my original intention without judgment. I’ll recognize the Saboteur at work – “Oh, that’s my Saboteur” – and since my Saboteur always lies, I’ll ignore it. I’ll be firm with myself and affirm that even though paying attention is hard, I can do hard. I’ll remember that I am someone who honors her commitments.

I also give myself permission to change the commitment – but only in advance, not in the moment. “Starting tomorrow, my commitment changes” is a conscious choice; “This time it won’t matter if I don’t do what I said I’d do” is the Saboteur speaking.

I’ve decided to stick with this challenge of eating mindfully.

What is your spirit luring you to pay attention to? What are you willing to do mindfully?

Even Mercedes-Benz recognizes the significance of serving both sides of the brain, as evidenced in their Left Brain - Right Brain ads.

What’s your vision for your writing and the rest of your life in 2012? And not a boring, corporate-like planning and strategy session — a real vision.

Sure you need to ask those logical, linear, pragmatic questions that the left hemisphere knows are important. But you also need to invite the right hemisphere to play too, if you want a truly creative vision.

Questions for Your Left Brain

• What do you want to do in 2012?
• What accomplishments will you be most proud of when you review 2012 next January?
• What specific action can you take to make sure you reach these accomplishments?
• What habits do you want to add in 2012?
• What habits do you want to maintain in 2012?
• What beliefs and behaviors would you like to abandon in 2012?
• What do you want to learn in 2012?
• What is the biggest opportunity for you in 2012?
• What is the biggest risk for you in 2012?
• Who or what do you want to serve in 2012?

You’ll want to write responses to these questions for your left brain. Be as formal or informal with your writing as you wish; you can freewrite, journal, outline, draft an essay or create a project plan.

Questions for Your Right Brain

• Who do you want to be in 2012?
• What sensory experiences do you want in 2012?
  What do you want to see? What do you want to hear?
  What do you want to smell? What do you want to taste?
  What do you want to touch and feel?
• What emotions do you want to feel in 2012?
• What do you want to create in 2012? What do you want to bring into your life and into the world?
• How do you want to experience time in 2012?
• How do you want to grow spiritually in 2012?
• What objects, people or phrases symbolize what you hope for in 2012?
• What is the theme of 2012?  What’s your theme song for 2012? What’s your motto? What will you name 2012? The Year of ….
• Who do you need to be to bring this vision to reality?

I highly recommend collecting objects and images as you think about responses to these questions for the right brain. Collaging is a great way to explore the connections between the objects, ideas and images you’ll discover with these questions.

A Challenge for the Whole Brain

Another cool brain-based ad from Mercedes-Benz

Use the Mercedes-Benz ad as inspiration for how you can bring the responses from your two brains together. Combine your written responses to the questions for the left brain with the collage you create in response to the questions for the right brain.

I’d love to see what you come up with. Please email a pdf to me or post your combined response on your Facebook wall and leave a comment here to direct us to it.

“Dancing through life,

Swaying and sweeping and always keeping cool,

Life is fraughtless when you’re thoughtless,

Those who don’t try never look foolish…”

At the same time, I keep thinking about Japanese director Akira Kurosawa’s observation that “To be an artist means never to avert your eyes.”

“Don’t try, don’t look foolish” versus “Don’t avert your eyes”

Resistance sometimes comes from the desire to not look foolish; it 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. We want to be thoughtless so life can be fraughtless. We want to avert our eyes. There are painful truths we don’t want to know we know.

But the resistance, the very thing you struggle with and perhaps wish would disappear, is actually your saving grace.

As long as you feel resistance, you haven’t given up. If even the smallest part of you still wants to write, that crucial part isn’t willing to just dance through life. You don’t really want to, as the song suggests, “Stop studying strife and learn to live the unexamined life.”

You can’t help but look. Maybe you can’t look very long, but you can’t stop trying. As you build your capacity to look longer and longer before you avert your eyes, you build your capacity to be the artist you were born to be.

Here’s the kicker, when you learn to look long and hard, when you learn to really see, you see that – amidst the pain, fear and strife you want to avert your eyes from – there is beauty, music and joy.

You still want to dance. You dance, not to avoid reality, but to embrace life fully. You dance with your eyes open.

Shall we?

Rosanne's 2012 Vision Collage

New Year Resolutions are worse than a waste of time. Depending on what statistics and studies you look at, anywhere from 78% to 92% of the people who make resolutions fail to keep them.

New Year Resolutions train you to break promises to yourself, which is the opposite of what writers who want to move through resistance need to do. We need to know we can trust ourselves.

We need to know that when we make a commitment to write, we will keep it No Matter What. That’s why I recommend short commitments for Product Time – no more than 15 minutes – so you consistently honor them no matter what else happens.

If you haven’t made New Year Resolutions, you’re ahead of the game. If you’ve already made New Year Resolutions, I encourage you to officially cancel them (so that you don’t end up eventually breaking a promise to yourself). Replace resolutions with something far more likely to lead you to the satisfaction of success.

Instead of resolutions, create a New Vision for the coming year.

New Year, New Vision

You don’t need promises you expect to break; you need a vision to guide you.

Start by identifying what you want to experience in 2012. What do you want to accomplish? What skills do you want to develop? What do you want to explore and what do you want to discover? What are you willing to let go and what do you want to embrace?

Use specific, sensory-rich words to respond to the previous questions. Describe what you want to see, hear, taste, smell and feel physically and emotionally.

• What colors and shapes do you want to predominate in your life in 2012?
• What sounds do you resonate with? What’s your theme song for 2012?
• What flavors and scents do you want to enjoy in 2012?
• What do you want to touch and hold in 2012?
• What emotions do you want to prevail in 2012?

Gather pictures and objects that represent what you want to experience this year. Create a collage or sculpture or give the pictures and objects places of honor in your writing space.

Step back from the specific, sensory details and focus on the big picture. If you hold true to the vision, what will 2012 be for you? Name your year. For me, 2012 is the Year to Relish Life.

What will 2012 be for you?

When you track Process, Self-Care and Product Time, keep your attention on two facts: “This is what I said I’d do. This is what I did.”

One of the benefits of tracking is that the feedback allows you to recognize changes in your patterns and decide what action to take to stay on track (or get back on track) and moving in the direction you want to go.

Judgment denies you this benefit. You can’t discern patterns and trends if you’ve leaped to judging the data. Judgments, either positive or negative, make it impossible to see what’s really happening.

Negative judgments include thoughts or comments like:

• “I had a bad week (or a terrible week).”
• “I’m disappointed (or frustrated, disgusted, etc.) with what I did this week.”
• “I didn’t do well this week at all.”
• “This was a tough week.”
• “I was too busy and let other things get in the way.”
• “I’m really bad at this.”
• “I could have/should have done better.”

Positive judgments include:

•  “I had a good week (or a great week).”
• “I’m really happy (or satisfied, proud, etc.) with what I did this week.”
• “I did really well this week.”
• “This was a productive week.”
• “It was easy to make time for my writing.”
• “I’m really getting good at this.”

These positive judgements are fun to make and you can claim any of these LATER. But first, track your progress for the week. As you do that, make no evaluations. Make no excuses. Don’t go into long stories or explanations.

When you notice that you’re judging or making excuses (and you probably will continue to do this as you retrain your thinking), acknowledge the mistake, “Oops, that’s a judgement. That’s not what I need.” In other words, don’t judge yourself for judging. Redirect your attention to the facts: what you said you would do and what you actually did.

Once you’ve identified the facts, you can and should celebrate your accomplishments. Even if your judgement would be negative (if you were letting yourself judge), even if you need to make adjustments, the fact that you’re tracking is reason to celebrate. Give yourself credit for what you did, identify what action you want to take in the coming week to either correct the course or maintain your momentum, and keep going! And keep tracking where and how you go.

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.