Creativity coach, writing and creative process instructor, speaker, author of Around the Writer's Block: Using Brain Science to Write the Way You Want (Penguin/Tarcher 2012) and Dancing in the Dragon's Den (Red Wheel Weiser), Teaching Artist at the Loft Literary Center.
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.
Twin City Writers Do you ever wonder what’s behind all the buzz about the Loft Literary Center? Considered the possibility that maybe you should check it out? Or if you already understand why the Loft has such a fabulous reputation, have you been entertaining the thought maybe it’s time you came back? Maybe to register … More Open Your Writing Possibilites
A creative quick hit is something you do for the fun of it for a short time. Quick hits invite you to play with something new and get immediate or nearly immediate satisfaction. Creative quick hits free you to explore and take risks, give you the satisfaction of completion, and remind you that the process works. … More Creative Quick Hits (to Knock Out Writer’s Block)
If you don’t think of writing as something you have to do, you never find time for it, but if you do make writing something you have to do, it leeches all the joy out of it.
Here’s where a Product Time habit comes to the rescue.
… More Keep Writer’s Block at Bay by Keeping Writing Something You Get to Do Part 2
This blog is two years old today and I’m so glad I get to write it today. (Mini-brag: for two years, I published at least one post per week, which was my commitment when I started. Hooray for me!) How often do you talk about writing as something you “get to do today”? When you … More Keep Writer’s Block at Bay by Keeping Writing Something You Get to Do Part 1
Bane of Your Resistance 