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I’ve been reading a book called Fearless Creating: a step-by-stepguide to starting and completing your work of art, by Eric Maisel. Like Dorothea Brande’s classic book Becoming a Writer, this is less a ‘craft’ guidebook, and more a ‘process’ guidebook. It’s the sort of book that describes the creative mind set and shows you how to develop it.One of the exercises that Maisel says is the most important in the whole book is the ability to ‘hush’ your mind. ‘Hushing’ says Maisel, ‘is what we do when we go into a museum and sit in front of one painting for fifteen minutes.’ Hushing is a ‘quieting and an opening’ – and there is no creative life without this ability to hush. Hushing sounds a lot like the open, receptive state of mind that is associated with ‘right-brain’ awareness, and is also the state of ‘choiceless awareness’ that meditation aspires to. When the mind is quiet and receptive – and not busy with mental chatter – ideas can rise to the surface.
Some writers achieve this state of mind by walking, swimming, doing yoga or washing the dishes. Others know it when they wake up in the middle of the night to write something in the notepad beside their bed. Maisel suggests that it’s only when the conscious, busy, ‘thinking’ mind has grown quiet that insights and ideas can surface.
Maisel also explains that ‘hushing’ needs to be practiced in conjunction with ‘holding’, if any real work is to be done. 'Holding' is the ability to carry an idea for a book or a painting (or any other project )loosely in the back of your mind as you go about your day. By holding the project in the periphery of your vision you allow the ideas and stimuli that you encounter during the day (or during your working practice) to enter it and inform it. I’ve also heard this process called ‘being in the grist’, when almost everything you experience seems to somehow relate to, or feed into, the container of your novel. Have you experienced the processes of ‘hushing’ and ‘holding’? If so, how do you achieve them?
I’ve been planning a new book for the last while – it’s always hard to say how long for, because some ideas for it have been floating around for several years. But lately I’ve been consciously working on the plan.
But stories are built largely in the subconscious, and so ‘consciously planning’ means a funny kind of working. Sometimes it means staying in bed a few more minutes in the morning, sorting out whether any useful thoughts have come out of my dreams and first waking thoughts. Sometimes it means putting a question in my mind and taking the dog on a long walk while that question rolls around, and seeing what answers stick to it.
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| My table this morning |
Sometimes it means using EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique, or tapping) to fight the fear of what if there aren’t any answers to this question – or what if this story simply can’t work.
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| First page of notes for Raven's Mountain/Facing the Mountain |
But it still centres around actually jotting down notes, writing out questions and ‘What if?’ answers, drawing maps, looking up random bits of information on google, in encyclopedias, and asking people who might happen to know.
There’ve been vigorous, stimulating conversations with my editor, writing friends and other people involved in the project.
And I can feel the story growing in me, ready and anxious to burst out. There’ll be changes, revisions, huge deletions and redrafting. I usually start a new book thinking, ‘Maybe this time it’ll be right the first time – I’ll write it in a few drafts.’ It’s never happened in under twelve, often closer to twenty, but you never know. Miracles happen.
It’s time to start writing. In the end, that’s the only way a story can grow.
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"Sometimes it means using EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique, or tapping) to fight the fear of what if there aren’t any answers to this question – or what if this story simply can’t work."
Yes, I usually do this when I feel afraid and when I'm depressed, quite relaxing.