The Problem with a Problem Solving

The problem-solving rut sneaks up on me. It happens to me in a few different ways.

Scenario I: I’ve gotten my characters into some nice trouble and the resulting tension is thick. Without my noticing, my mind shifts into analyzing mode and goes to work solving all the problems. Bye, bye tension.
Scenario II: I wake up from a dream and, wonderfully, I understand the theme of what I’m writing. My mind excitedly latches onto the goal of expressing the theme and, yikes, my characters are pronouncing platitudes and proverbs in a landscape of ham-fisted symbolism.

Not a lot of stories about happy meditating people

Once my mind gloms onto a goal, the juicy tension and heat dry up into analysis, evaluation, organizing and strategizing. Images and experiences are examined for their personal growth value. Characters start verbally therapizing themselves and others, become self-actualized and happily sit down to meditate.

When you meet one of these mental ruts, and feel the urgency evaporate, check in with the senses: sights, smells, sounds, textures, temperature, tastes. This will give your mind the concrete task it seeks, while leading it away from the linear track it’s so attached to.

1. Have your character look out the nearest window and describe whatever is in view.
2. Search your character’s car, the top shelf of their closet and the back of their sock drawer.
3. Have your character talk about a smell or food they hate and how it affects them.
4. List 7 sounds your character hears every day.
5. Smell your character’s favorite bathroom products. Are they clean and antiseptic? Spicy? Herbal? Cheap? Expensive?
6. Have your character talk about the kiss they’ll never forget.

You get the idea. The senses are a direct line to emotion, memory and meaning. Draw your mind out of the problem-solving rut with something that it can dig into and things will get lively real quick.

Let me know how it goes…

FAQ: What do I do about the Inner Critic?

I’ve never met a creative person who didn’t have an inner critic or five or a hundred, whispering mean nothings in their ear as they strive toward artistic expression. Everybody has some combination of inner party-poopers, perfectionists, hard-asses and worry-warts to keep the creative risk-taking in check.

In my work with writers, I’ve had the dubious honor of meeting hundreds of inner critics. They come in every shape, size and species:

• Goody Two-Shoes, “Don’t write that, it’s mean. Or that either, it’s too sad.”
• Party Dude, “Writing is booooooring.”
• Real Friend, “Because I love you, I will always tell you the truth about yourself and your writing. And the truth is, you don’t have what it takes.”
• Psychopath, “If you try and write a single word I’ll lock you up in my basement and feeds bits of you to my pigs.” No, really.

To get relief and take back your process, start by courting some perspective: realize that you weren’t born with this unpleasant entourage. The mean voices may feel like a part of you, they may even feel like they are you, but not so. As a small child, you were free of these inner critics and you were uninhibited. Then at some point, a bully puffed himself up by making you feel small, “Loser!” A teacher used humiliation as motivator, “Weak effort!.” Mom and Dad want to keep you safe, “You’ll put your eye out!” Each voice rode in on a shot of adrenaline that seared it into your psyche so that it felt hard-wired.

“Okay, so they’re not me. They still drive me crazy!” Right. What to do?

My mother used to tell me to ignore the mean kid up the street and he’d get bored and leave me alone. Where did she get this idea? If I ignored him he just upped the torment to new levels until I flipped out, which delighted him no end. When you ignore a boor, what happens? They talk louder. They’ll take negative attention over no attention at all.

But, what if you turn toward them and listen? They will most likely 1) deflate, having nothing interesting or important to say. 2) shrink in mortification, rather than cop to those nasty, disturbing comments they’ve been throwing at the back of your head. 3) make a legitimate comment or request and be done with it. Unless it’s the psychopath with the pigs, in which case you may want to seek professional help. As in: hire an assassin.

When you listen to what your inner critics are saying, the first thing you’ll notice is very little of it is true. The rest of it is not true all the time. And if any of it is true, fine. You’re working on it.

These voices self-perpetuate by making you believe they are the expert on you, and without their guidance you will crash and burn. But, they are experts on nothing other than self-perpetuation.  They’re like some news organizations who ratchet up your panic levels so that you’ll stay tuned, “We’re all going to die tomorrow. Learn all the terrifying facts tonight at 11.”

So, the first step in working with inner critics is to see them for what they are. In the next FAQ I’ll give you some tactics for disempowering, evicting or, in the rare case, re-training them.

Click here for more Frequently Asked Questions.

Hug the Cat

If I see someone I haven’t seen for a while, and I think, “Please, Brain, don’t forget her name,” then it’s guaranteed that her name will dive straight to the bottom of the pile. If you say to me, “Don’t think of blue elephants,” my brain will instantly redecorate with blue elephant wallpaper. Telling my brain not to do something is like telling a two-year old not to hug the cat. Now all that exists in the world is, kitty kitty kitty kitty must hug kitty.

I can’t point to any empirical data, here, but I have a feeling that many people have this experience with the brain. For instance, if you want to write about love and you think, “Don’t use any cliché’s,” what happens? Exactly. You magically become a reference library for love clichés.

So, this leads me to ask the very scholarly question, “What is the BFD?”

I know it feels like something very important is happening every time words start appearing on the page, but who’s going to die if some of them form up into a big, fat, sticky, corn syrupy cliché? Who’s going to go to prison for life if you fill the entire page with every cliché known to man and invent a few new ones while you’re at it? Every cliché that your brain tries not to think of is an obstacle that it has to push through, jump across or army crawl under. Do you want to wait for your brain to navigate all the junk? Why not just empty the junk out your pen and give your brain a clear path to new territory?

PROMPT: Finish the sentence, “Love is…,” as many different ways as you can in 6 minutes. Strive for cliché. Try to be trite, threadbare, heavy-handed and ham-fisted. Extra points for chewing the scenery.

The Passive-Aggressive Writing Space

I either write a thank you note in the first week following the receipt of the gift, or it’s not going to happen. Miss Manners says that no matter how much you’ve procrastinated or been legitimately delayed in sending the thank you, it is still owed. However, after about day six, I start to feel lame for not being one of those people who is eager to express gratitude. And then as more time passes, I feel that if I send the note, it will be received, opened and read with a disapproving cluck of the tongue, like, “I guess my gift didn’t make that much of an impression…” And then I’m into that feeling of not wanting to send the note in hopes of just not reminding the gift-giver of my sad, sad, self-centeredness. Ugh. I’m going to give myself hives just thinking about it.

As we’ve discussed, procrastination happens. When you haven’t written for a few days or a week or 30 years or whatever it is, you may run into a situation similar to that of my thank-you-note-mind-fuck. Many writers do. The first bit of time away from the writing is no big deal. You’ve probably got an excellent excuse – you have visiting relatives, you’re moving, things got crazy at work – but then, as time slips by and you don’t find your way back into the writing space, you start to feel like your writing is disappointed in you. You imagine yourself timidly entering the space and seeing your writing, arms crossed, avoiding your eyes, “Well, hello. I was starting to wonder if you were ever coming back.”

“I’m sorry, I just got- “

“No, no. I was worried is all. I called all the hospitals.”

“Really? Well, you didn’t have to- “

“It’s fine. I’m just glad you’re okay. Now I can take down all of those ‘Have You Seen This Writer?!’ fliers I put up…”

“You put up fliers?”

“Well, it was nothing. I needed something to do with all of extra time I had from not sleeping.”

And so, imagining the writing space becoming more and more hostile, you just stay away.

Well, unlike the thank-you-note-scenario, the passive-aggressive and shaming presence that you feel emanating from your writing space is not a real person. You can re-imagine and re-engineer this reception any way you like. You can imagine returning to a space where the writing has been happily developing all along and all you have to do is catch up to it. You can imagine cookie smells and sunlight splashing into the room. Maybe you like red carpet being rolled out. A warm embrace, a hot cup of coffee being pressed into your hand, a happy dog waking and wagging her tail at the sight of you? What would encourage you back into the writing space? Whatever it is, you can have it.

PROMPT: Make a list of everything that makes you feel welcome. These can be places, people, facial expressions, actions. They can be experiences you’ve had or experiences you’d like to have. Keep your pen moving and go for quantity over quality. Bonus points if you write some things that don’t make any sense. 6 minutes

Deeper Ground

Like many people, I make household chores nicer for myself by listening to podcasts and audiobooks. Lately, I’ve been favoring the audio sermon’s from by my brilliant friend, Nancy Palmer Jones, a minister at First Unitarian Church of San Jose. Yesterday, her  sermon on creativity, sent me to Google to find out more about flower bulbs.

Nancy painted a vivid picture of a bulb, planted in the fall, waiting in the dark for months, until that internal signal tells it to start reaching, pushing, nudging its way up through the hard-packed earth. The image started to work on me. I thought about this flaking, hairy, lump of starch, slowly processing everything it received on the surface – from the sun, the air, the soil – and transforming it into enough energy to push something of beauty up and into the world again. I wondered if the bulb needed the resistance of the soil to increase its muscularity.

My search brought me almost immediately to this article in Science Daily: “Smart Flower Bulbs Pull Themselves into Deeper Ground,” which explains that bulbs planted too shallowly will dig themselves deeper. No, really, they have “contractile” roots that work like very, very slow muscles, helping the bulb to snuggle down to a safer depth, away from the harsh frost. Now, this would seem to make its job harder in the spring, increasing the distance it has to cover, but apparently the bulb isn’t looking to cut corners. Struggling up through the soil is part of the  process.

A few weeks ago, in the Tuesday Night Writing group, we had a great discussion about the puzzling disconnect between our urgent desire to write and our indomitable resistance to do so. Is it possible that the resistance is a perfectly natural, maybe even necessary part of the creative process?

Most things that want to get born in this world, have to fight their way out of the thing that protected them during a vulnerable gestation – eggshells, cocoons, wombs, seeds. It’s unpleasant, but it’s natural and so we don’t take it personally or try to fix it. Maybe it’s even beneficial, increasing the strength and viability of the thing being born.

This age-old problem of resistance in all its forms – avoidance, doubt, procrastination, depression, and on and on – might not be a problem at all. Perhaps the problem that needs addressing is our perception that resistance means something is wrong.

Everywhere we look in the natural world, there it is – resistance. Have you ever watched a wild salmon work his way up river? If you raise him in a fish farm, removing that upriver struggle from his process, what does he do with all that naturally occurring internal G-force? When a poem or a story or a painting is ready to emerge through us, who’s to say that it isn’t looking for a current to swim against.

Spy on your resistance and notice if you see ways in which it actually helps your creative process. For instance, I know that resistance can be the smoke that leads you to the fire – the more smoke there is, the hotter the flames. What are other positive aspects of resistance?

PROMPT: Finish the sentence, “If I reach deeper…” 6 minutes.

Inalienable Rights

Actually the word I’m looking for here is “intrinsic.”

Intrinsic Rights

Intrinsic: Of or relating to the essential nature of a thing; inherent.

DAILY PROMPT: Brainstorm and/or draft the Writer’s Bill of Rights. Be silly, serious, unrealistic and impractical by turns. Let it rip. All the basic and not-so-basic rights that should be intrinsically granted to creative people to ensure them the freedom to contribute to the fullest extent of their abilities. 8 minutes

Entitlement

Like many straight women, most of my domestic partners have not scored high in the household chores area. I have been known, to stomp around making a big show of doing all the chores by myself while the man of the house watches tv, reads, yacks on the phone or naps, oblivious. All the time I was cooking, cleaning, canning and gardening, I was thinking, “If only he’d get off his butt and help me, It’d get done quicker and I’d have more time to write.” Oh, the outrage. What is this? The 50′s?

Our mother’s fought a feminist revolution to make sure we were allowed to do “men’s work,” but men never developed an interest in doing “women’s work.” And, you know, somebody has to do it.

I tried all the usual tactics. Just so you know, in case you’re still wrestling with this issue in your relationship, none of them work. Here’s the short list, with analysis:

• Going on strike. He won’t notice the fur growing around the base of the toilet. If the window is too grimy to see out of, he’ll open it. When there are no more clean dishes, he’ll stick to foods that can be eaten on a paper towel. When you get rats, he’ll either start hunting with a bee bee gun or buy a new house.
• Assigning him his own personal chore. No matter how manageable it is, he won’t do it. At least not consistently. And probably not to your standard. And then you’ll have to get mad at him.
• Nagging. Doesn’t work and you’ll be embarrassed for yourself.
• Shaming. Similar to nagging, but more specific. “If you loved me more…” Don’t stoop to this. You’ll hate yourself in the morning.
• Sexual withholding. Are we really going to whore ourselves out for a little help around the house?

Well, then what is to be done? Honestly, who does he think he is, sitting there contemplating the horizon, with his feet up while I scrub and clean, repair and paint, beautify and upgrade. What a sense of entitlement!

I remember the exact moment I got free of this syndrome. I was driving and someone on the radio was talking about gun control and the third amendment and how to interpret the Bill of Rights. I pictured a man named Bill of Rights, feet up, coffee mug steaming, reading the paper, content.

“I have a right to my downtime!” he was saying.

“What about my rights?!” I shot back

Bill just looked at my pityingly and went back to his paper. Oh, my God! That was it. I had Sense of Entitlement envy.

Whenever anyone treats you disrespectfully, your mother will say, “She’s just jealous.” Well, I was. I was jealous-going-on-bitter. I wanted to revoke my partner’s right to sit, relax, expand, contemplate and enjoy the view. Why? Because I was jealous that my own bill of rights didn’t have any of that stuff.

And Bill of Rights was right, I realized. Was this to be my contribution to the world? Healthy houseplants and organized cupboards? A well-stocked pantry? Is that what I wanted my obituary to say? “She leaves behind her husband of 40 years and a completely dust-free living room…”

If God were to pick my ear, of all the ears in the world, to whisper the secrets of life into, I don’t think I’d hear, “The road to heaven is paved with chores.” Or “I have filled the world with dirt so that woman may clean it and I may be well pleased in her.”

I think I’d hear, “I gave you gifts, girl. You could show a little gratitude by using them.”

Perhaps you are conditioned to plump pillows. But you are entitled to write, to create, to make meaning of your world, to contemplate and celebrate the complexities of existence. You don’t have to earn it, sneak it, squeeze it in between “real” work, justify it or have anything to show for it. You’re just entitled to it.

If your messy house distracts you, get out of the house.

Let the dishes sit there. Eat your cereal with a fork if there are no clean spoons. Or drink your cereal from a glass. Is it more important to be civilized or to create? Clean when company is coming, if you must. Or, better yet, meet company for drinks and then go take in some theater.

Who was that person that thought the closets needed repainting?

DAILY PROMPT: Finish the sentence, “I’m entitled to…” as many different ways as you can in the allotted time. Or use it as a launchpad and return to it if need be. 7 minutes

Note: This is a good one for character development

Fear Factor III

DAILY PROMPT: Finish the sentence, “When I’m not afraid…” What does it feel like to be released from fear? Where do you feel fearlessness in your body? What happens to your mind? Your will? Your sense of possibility? 6 minutes.

Fear Factor II

DAILY PROMPT: Finish the sentence, “When I’m afraid…” What happens to your mind when fear strikes? What happens to your body? How do you “do” fear? Do you talk too much? Do you hiss and spit? Do you turn to stone? How do you cope with or work through fear? 6 minutes

Fear Factor

DAILY PROMPT: Finish the sentence, “I’m not afraid…” as many different ways as you can. Don’t worry about being truthful, deep, funny or even making sense. 6 minutes

Note: This prompt (and yesterday’s) are great for character development. Have your protagonist and antagonist do these prompts.