Work with the Brain you Have Today.

There are days when my brain is sharp and can juggle the parts of a story and see the connections and push the pieces around on the big board in my mind. Other days, I’m single track and others I’m jumpy and distractible. I take my vitamins, get lots of sleep and exercise, and eat a brain-friendly diet, but that brain organ is sensitive. Everything acts on it, from what you ingest, to whom you hang out with, to the color of your walls, to the phase of the moon.

And maybe, just maybe, there is no single, ideal brain state for creativity. What if the only problem is our bias toward or against certain brain-states? What if you just work with the brain you have today? If your brain is not in juggling mode, make a lot of notes like, “When my brain is working again, take care of this issue and work out that problem,” and so on. So before you up your caffeine intake, figure out what brain you’ve got today and see what it wants to do:

• Fuzzy, undirected brain –Try timed prompts that will direct it for you.
• Nit-picky brain – Skip the deep character development and go to a chapter that needs a tweak-and-polish.
• Slow-cooker brain – Cogitate on theme or some other tough nugget that needs its fibers broken down.
• Big-picture brain – Look at how your scenes fit together and stay away from all the tiny freckle parts of the book.
• Stuck-in-a-rut brain – Take a walk and let your thoughts float up and out of the trench they’ve dug for themselves.
• Tired brain – Don’t judge. Don’t struggle. Take a power-nap. Naps are the bomb for creativity. There’s a lot of research and anecdotal evidence.

So, after you freak out and catastrophize and decide that you must have had a stroke or that you were never any good at writing, plus a terrible spouse and parent, plus your doomed, or whatever fight or flight thinking has to happen first… remember that there are plenty of days when you’re on top of it and you will be again.

Be friendly to your brain. And for Heaven’s sake, be respectful. Your brain is amazing. It’s so complex and powerful that it can’t even comprehend its own complexity or know the limits of its own power. And you have one of these in your head, working tirelessly to help you create, and it runs on calories.

So be patient and curious, notice, assess. So much of writing is about learning your brain and working with its modes. Maybe there are people who have the same brain every day and don’t have to work around energy spikes and hormone dips, but I haven’t met one. Just as there are days where all your brain is good for is filing and sorting, there are days when your brain is capable of big leaps and deep dives, and it’s important to be able to recognize that mode too so you can work it for everything you can get.

How to Get a Writing Habit

For many writers, the biggest challenge is not getting the words on the paper. The biggest challenge is getting the butt in the chair.

How do we face the unknown every day?

It’s not surprising that we resist sitting down to write. Writing the equivalent of stepping into the unknown. You have no idea what you’ll meet there. It could be bewitching characters in enticing landscapes or it could be childhood demons and soul-sucking silence. There’s no promise of success when entering into the complete unknown and that’s just really uncomfortable.

How do you make a daily practice of something that’s just really uncomfortable? Make a habit of it. Ah, but how do you make a habit? We don’t have any control over our habits, do we?

Luckily, the brain is the scientific frontier du jour and there are daily discoveries that help us work with this ultra-powerful and mysterious gadget between our ears. Recent studies into habit formation in the brain have a great deal to offer writers.

Research suggests:

1. that we no longer have to be enslaved by our habits. We can work with the brain to break bad habits and form healthy ones.
2. the brain loves a habit, so if you make a habit of writing, you reprogram your brain to love writing.

A habit saves brain energy, freeing up resources and reducing stress levels. That’s why the brain latches onto a habit, good or bad. If you can get your brain to latch onto writing, some of the resistance will lift and your butt will drop into the chair instead of you having to wrestle it down.

I’ll let you read the research at the provided links, but here’s are the basic ingredients for forming a habit: 1. Cue 2. Routine 3. Reward.

My writing habit looks like this:

1. Cue: Enter Bohemia Coffee Shop, exchange friendly greetings, order tea or coffee, plug in my headphones and tun on Pandora.
2. Routine: Write until my next appointment.
3. Reward: Pack up my computer and notebook, now more full of words than they were when I started.

The research:

• An article about how companies track our buying habits, with some great research and insight into the habits themselves.
• An article about Charles Duhigg’s book, “The Power of Habit.”
• A cute little video by Charles Duhigg, explaining how to break a habit.

Let me know about your writing habit.

PROMPT: Launch from the sentence starter, “I am/am not in the habit of…” and keep your pen moving for 6 minutes.

Memory is for the Future

Right Brain

The idea of using sense memory work for unlocking new stories and enlivening old ones, was engendered by a discussion with neuroscientist Ken Kosic, who specializes in the study of Alzheimer’s. Mr. Kosic was speaking about the fallibility of memory, photographic phenomenon aside, and our inability to recall an experience correctly. This now much-researched theory asserts that the more we remember an experience, the more we change it. So, our most treasured memories – a first kiss, the big race, any peak moment – are overlayed with new information every time we recall them. He asserted that the only way to preserve a memory would be to fall victim to amnesia immediately upon first remembrance.

Left Brain

Complicating matters, is the fact that memory is not stored in one place in the brain. There are separate areas that are responsible for remembering numbers, words, faces, sensory experiences, music and on and on. And in any individual brain, these areas function with varying degrees of efficacy.

If memory is not a reliable tool for recreating or understanding the past, well then, what is memory good for? Mr. Kosik’s thought, was that memory is a powerful tool for creating stories that help us navigate the future. I find this thrilling.

Having always had a trick memory, with large pieces missing from my personal timeline, I find great release in the thought that memory is not about documenting the past. But, if memory is a compartmentalized warehouse of images, instances and sensations that are ever-evolving to inform our sense of the present and future, well… Bob’s your uncle!  In this new context, my memory is infinitely valuable and, with the right tools, I can mine it and find endless treasure that can be refined for use in story.

The other thing this does is relieve us of the stifling task of piecing together the “truth” of the past. In other words, memoir is always going to be, to a lesser or greater degree, a fiction that is constantly evolving to serve us in the present. We can let go of telling it like it was. Your shared experiences are being remembered differently, with ever-shifting details, by those you shared them with. You will never tell their version accurately. This means you’re free to tell your version. And that is the version that carries a valuable personal truth that only you can convey.

So, now that you know there is no way to get it right, go ahead and get it wrong. Tell the story, rather than the history.

DAILY PROMPT: I remember… 6 minutes