Writing can be a way to express ourselves or understand the world we live in. But sometimes, getting started is the biggest battle.
For two years now, NHPR has partnered with state poet laureate Alex Peary to bring you analysis of your work and strategies to get your words on the page.
Peary’s term as poet laureate ends in March. She sat down with NHPR’s All Things Considered host Julia Furukawa to share tips on mindful writing, so you can start to tell your own stories.
Transcript
We tend to focus on the future, on how people at a future date will think about what we're working on right now. Where does that eye to the future come from, and how can we maybe close that eye for a bit while we work?
Basically, just as human beings our tendency is to be mindless. So we mindlessly brush our teeth, mindlessly answer questions, mindlessly turn our computer on, whatever it's going to be across the room. We also mindlessly write, and we tend to think of the future and [it clouds] our perceptions during the present moment.
Many of us also expect perfectionism in all facets of our life, and that includes writing. Do you have strategies for how we can live in the moment and drop that expectation that everything has to be perfect the first try?
We have this ongoing self-talk in our minds, and we're always convincing ourselves, unwittingly, about our ability... So it's really important to check in with how we're talking to ourselves and do it often, just to get a sense of those signals that we're sending ourselves. Our relationship with our words is our relationship with ourselves.
You've described the writing process as going through three stages: demon, monkey, and river. Can you break that down for us?
These [are] creatures from the future, sometimes the past, and we pretend that they're in our writing moment, perched at the edge of our desk while we're working. But they're completely fabrications of our self-talk. And so they notice when we're trying to be perfect while we're creating, or we're procrastinating all kinds of activities that suggest that we're not alone while we write. We have these ghosts. Once you start noticing them, you can kind of tame them a bit to something less scary and less intimidating, to a monkey. And a monkey is just more like scattered and jumping around and trying to distract us. And the third stage is accessing what I call the river. And it's this ongoing, impermanent, ever changing flow of language that goes through our heads. And if we can watch this with [a] detached, non-evaluative stance and see it's changing, we'll have this ability to write in the way we want with fluidity, and ease and joy.
How does intentional breathing play into intentional writing?
Anytime we do anything physically, it has to be with awareness. It grounds us in the present moment. But breathing is particularly special. I mean, we never breathe in the future. You don't breathe in the past. You're breathing here and now, and it's this wonderful thing that also calms stress hormones. It has physiological benefits. No one needs to know you're meditating. I mean, you could be mindfully breathing anywhere, right? And for writing, it puts the body and the mind in sync. But most importantly, mindful breathing settles us into the moment.
You've said there is no writer's block if we can perceive the moment mindfully. How can we break down the myth of writer's block and get to that place?
You have to be able to observe the ever changing moment with detachment and full acceptance. So you sit at the desk and you watch what arises, and language does pass. Some garbage goes past, and there are also some blank moments, but things are floating past on that river. And if you watch it without preconception as to what you should be writing, but rather what is mentally arising right now, you will write. There is no such thing as block.
Alex Peary teaches mindful writing at Salem State University and has given a TEDx talk on the subject, which can be viewed here.
