Viewing: Blog Posts Tagged with: Joanne Cantor, Most Recent at Top [Help]
Results 1 - 1 of 1
How to use this Page
You are viewing the most recent posts tagged with the words: Joanne Cantor in the JacketFlap blog reader. What is a tag? Think of a tag as a keyword or category label. Tags can both help you find posts on JacketFlap.com as well as provide an easy way for you to "remember" and classify posts for later recall. Try adding a tag yourself by clicking "Add a tag" below a post's header. Scroll down through the list of Recent Posts in the left column and click on a post title that sounds interesting. You can view all posts from a specific blog by clicking the Blog name in the right column, or you can click a 'More Posts from this Blog' link in any individual post.
While waiting for the dentist, a different issue of
Newsweek on my lap, I encounter something that I have long known to be true for me (but hey, I just thought I was weird). I walk away from the computer to dream or write. I check no emails, don't carry my phone. I seek, and nurture, a deliberate fogginess, retreating to a far somewhere before I allow myself to think about the story or sentence at hand. Some people think I am sleeping. I understand that I'm not. I can't write unless I enter this fog state first. It's the most peaceful—and productive—place that I go.
But don't take it from me. This from a Sharon Begley story titled "I Can't Think," in the March 7 issue of
Newsweek:
Creative decisions are more likely to bubble up from a brain that applies unconscious thought to a problem, rather than going at it in a full-frontal analytical assault. So while we're likely to think creative thoughts in the shower, it's much harder if we're under a virtual deluge of data. "If you let things come at you all the time, you can't use additional information to make a creative leap or a wise judgment," says [Joanne] Cantor (author of Conquer Cyber Overload). "You need to pull back from the constant influx and take a break." That allows the brain to subconsciously integrate new information with existing knowledge and thereby make novel connections and see hidden patterns....
This is why walking the dog is such a great way to be creative!
I like this idea of a fog state :-) I've worked out entire plot lines in the shower.
This explains why solutions often surface just as I begin to fall into a deep sleep. The knowing that comes seems magical. Of course I then wake up and write down what I found. Also, my daily walk is taken with index cards and a pen in my pocket. My neighbors know it just the writer on the other side of the subdivision. ;)
Yes--sometimes when I'm stuck, I just have to do nothing and then in the empty space the solution appears.
That's so funny: I just wrote a chapter in the book I am writing called: "Take a Drive/Take a Shower
Time and Spaces to Dream." Thanks for this, and I'm also happy to see the comments as it confirms what I am saying.