Are you afraid of running out of ideas? Don’t worry, the ideas will come.
Create a space for them and they will fill it. Begin typing until something pops up. It might take one or two pages. It might be days or weeks. Trust the process. Keep going. Don’t stop writing.
Meanwhile, fill the creative well. Go somewhere you’ve never been. It could be a corner of your own town. Watch people. Eat street food. Go to a secondhand shop. Play a video game. Color in an adult coloring book. Watch on old movie. Rearrange your writing space. Listen to music in another language. Stimulate your brain.
Suddenly you’ll feel like spilling over and the ideas will flood your pages.
Writing involves sitting and concentrating for hours at a time. Back aches, numb bottoms, and carpal tunnel syndrome can be distracting. One of the best ways to avoid these problems is to do exercise BEFORE you sit down to write.
Yoga was developed to prepare the body for long periods of stillness during meditation. Yoga also improves focus and blood flow to the brain. This makes it a perfect pre-writing routine.
If you’re feeling sleepy, try more vigorous forms of yoga like The 5 Tibetan Rites or Kundalini yoga. These are more energizing.
You can choose any kind of movement you like—burpees, jumping jacks, Zumba, a jog around the block. Anything to warm up the muscles and oxygenate the brain will do!
Do you ever get depressed without knowing what exactly is bothering you? Do you sometimes feel tired, restless, and not sure what to do with yourself? Maybe you find yourself spending too much time talking to your dog and checking your social media. You’re sick of your story and your characters and you don’t know why.
Now think about the last time you had a good chat or laugh
with someone. How long has it been?
Writers have a tendency to isolate themselves. We live inside our heads, but it’s medically proven that loneliness bad for us physically and mentally. It’s also bad for our craft. Staying isolated prevents us from being connected to the world and the people we write about.
Meet someone for coffee or a beer. Plan a dinner party. Call a close family member or friend. See how you feel afterward.
Sometimes we begin writing a story and we think, what the hell is this? What does it all mean?
Don’t stop for a second to think about what you are doing.
Don’t agonize over how to make your character more complex, or what pithy theme you’re trying to illustrate.
Just bang it all out. Scribble it down.
Often our stories are something we are trying into tell ourselves. Sometimes you have to get to the end to realize what it’s all really about.
If you don’t know what it means when you get to the end, don’t panic. Read it through. Read it many times. The ‘why’ of the story will become clear to you.
Open loops are unfinalized tasks, all that ‘stuff’ you gotta do. They are the perfect distraction from writing and can be used to avoid hard work. Open loops are the BFF of procrastination and hog up valuable RAM in your brain that could be used to power your writing.
To get into a creative flow state, you must close the loops. Here are few ways to ensure the background tasks are shut down.
Choose a writing time – Start waking up at 4am to have quiet time to write. What? No, just kidding. For some of us, such a drastic change sets us up for failure. It’s easier to carve out a writing time that already fits into the routine we have. Whatever you choose to do, designate this block and stick to it. After a few weeks of regular practice, your brain will expect to be let loose at this time and be primed to focus.
Make a to-do list every day – Write down every thing, big and small, that you have to do. Most of the time we’re not actually worrying about ‘doing the things.’ We are trying to figure out what are all the things we need to do. Are we missing something? Once you have them all listed, you close that loop. You don’t have to worry about what you’re supposed to be doing or if you’ve forgotten anything.
Prioritize tasks – What absolutely must be done now? What can wait till after your writing time? Put them in order of importance.
Knock ‘em down one at a time – Focus on one item at a time. Try to check off as many items as possible. Each check gives you a sense of accomplishment and closes that tab in your brain.
Plan remaining items – Prioritize and schedule the remaining items for later times or dates. That way you know what you have to do after writing. You don’t have to worry about how you’re going to get it all done. You already have a plan of attack.
Now you’re all set. Sit down and write. Slip into the zone.
