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 … More Step Away From the Marshmallow and No One Gets Writer’s Block
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 … More Step Away From the Catnip and No One Gets Writer’s Block
Identify the Opportunity and Desire Take a few minutes to complete this sentence (on the page or screen or in your head): “I want to write…” Did you write mainly about what content you want to write (e.g. a story about a rodeo clown, or poetry that moves people to tears, or an essay about … More The Right to Write What’s Right for You
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 … More Multitasking Kills Creativity and Causes Writer’s Block
Frustration and rejection are the tuition for persistance. … More Learning to Be Brave, Not Blocked
Since the heart of writer’s block is “Don’t Do It!”, the solution must be “Do!” Thanks to Susan S. for sending me a link to “My Favorite Artistic Advice,” a YouTube animation based on a letter by the artist Sol LeWitt, written to the artist Eva Hesse, with slight alterations (and animation) by Levni Yilmaz. The animation is … More Do!
The effective writer’s personality is not at the center. Her talent isn’t at the center. Her ego and self-worth are not at the center. The writing task is at the center.
This is how writers can quiet the conscious self and all the inner chatter that is the origin of resistance. The better we direct our attention away from our own qualities – our expectations, nerves, reputation – the easier it is to lose ourselves in the creative flow. We can prevent ourselves from thinking too much about ourselves as writers or about the quality of any given day’s writing – which is death to flow performance.
Pam McAlister (who we met in the previous post When Your Writing Is Stuck, Let Go) was able to let go of expectations because she had assumptions to hold on to. She assumed she would keep honoring her writing commitments, she assumed she had people to rely on and she assumed her writing had purpose. … More When Your Writing Is Stuck, Hold On
Expectations and demands that our writing MUST be something are a great way to get ourselves stuck. It’s a paradox: you can only do what you really want to do when you stop trying so hard to do it. Creativity thrives on these kinds of paradoxes.
Bane of Your Resistance 