Let imagination soar

A guest post by Christopher Foster of The Happy Seeker

Imagination makes your writing soar.

It gives a lift and momentum to your writing in the same way wind gives a lift to a sailboat. Imagination invites your readers into a new world they have never seen or experienced before. It opens a door to magic and wonder.

But how do we access, hone, and liberate the inspiration and power of imagination that is in us all?

“If you want to write”

Brenda Ueland, author of a classic book on the art of writing first published in 1938, had very strong views on this matter. Ueland, a Norwegian author and longtime teacher of writing, who was knighted by the king of Norway and set an international swimming record for over 80-year-olds, declared in her book, If You Want to Write: A Book about Art, Independence and Spirit:

Our idea that we must always be energetic and active is all wrong. Bernard Shaw says that it is not true that Napoleon was always snapping out decisions to a dozen secretaries and aides-de-camp, as we are told, but that he moodled around for months. Of course he did.

And that is why these smart, energetic, do it now, pushy people so often say: ‘I am not creative.’ They are, but they should be idle, limp and alone for much of the time, as lazy as men (or women) fishing on a levee, and quietly looking and thinking, not willing all the time. This quiet looking and thinking is the imagination: it is letting in ideas.

(By the way, the etymology of the word ‘moodle’ is unknown. Maybe Ueland made it up? If you look up the word “moodle” online, it refers nowadays to some kind of computer related program. Good luck finding out from a dictionary what this word means. To me, in the way Ueland used this word, it simply means “messing around” a bit with this or that while you give yourself a chance to see what the next step is.)

Writing is an art to be savored

But to proceed. Writing is an art to be loved and savored. It is an activity to be enjoyed, just as Ueland emphasizes in her book. Above all, as I was saying before, writing is an opportunity to engage our imagination in a way that perhaps we never experienced before.

One of the books that brought me the most pleasure in my own writing career was an animal fable that I entitled, The Raven Who Spoke with God. How this book unfolded from just a glimmer of an idea to a published book that was translated into 11 foreign-language editions illustrates, I think, Brenda Ueland’s message about inspiration and imagination from long ago.

A book begins as a little seed

I’ve spent much of my life alone with nature, and I love animals. The idea that we are intimately connected in a pattern of oneness with animals has been gestating in me for a long time.

One day soon after I moved to Colorado from British Columbia in 1998 to marry my wife JoAnn, an idea for a new book just popped easily and effortlessly into my mind without any trying on my part. I thought to myself, “Wouldn’t it be fun to write a book about integrity in which the hero would be not a person but an animal.” So I let this idea just “moodle” around in my mind, like Ueland suggested, until one day, browsing in Barnes and Noble, I happened to notice a book called “Mind of the Raven,” by Bernd Heinrich.

It was love at first sight. I grabbed the book from the shelf, knowing instinctively that a Raven would be a perfect animal for my new book. Oh my, did that book get a good going over. I absorbed every piece of information that Heinrich, a professor of biology at the University of Vermont, had to share about ravens, including his deep appreciation for this much maligned creature and its many remarkable gifts.

I started writing longhand in Starbucks

I started writing the first draft of my book in a Starbucks close to the Denver town home where JoAnn and I lived during the early years of our marriage. Every day I would walk to Starbucks with a yellow legal pad it in my hand, and spend a couple of hours or so working on my story of a young raven named Joshua and his heroic bid to restore the true honor of the raven.

Every day I would come home to JoAnn with a few more pages of indecipherable longhand in my hand. Every day she would ask me, “How did it go?” And every day I would grin this silly grin and say something like, “I think it went pretty good, thanks.”

I self published this book a few months later. I got the book back from the printer a day after 9/11, which in one sense, may not have been the best time to start promoting it. I promoted the heck out of it, cold calling book reviewers all across the country etc. Then one day I got a very magical email.

The email was from the editor of a Spanish publishing house in Barcelona called Ediciones B. “We would like to publish your book in a hardcover edition,” she said, and offered a couple of thousand dollars as an advance. Oh my, what a happy day that was.

Just to finish the story off, JoAnn and I had been thinking for a long time how lovely it would be to have a cruise in the Mediterranean. We went ahead with our cruise, making sure that we had a little time in Barcelona to meet my new editor, who kindly invited us to lunch. They did a lovely job producing the book, and with the help of an agent in London, it was followed as I say into many more foreign languages.

Want to write a book but not sure what to write about?

Do you feel an urge to write a book, but aren’t quite sure yet what you want to write about? Here are some suggestions.

1. Don’t be in a hurry. Let things percolate in their own good time. Here are some more words from Brenda Ueland:

I learned that you should feel when writing, not like Lord Byron on a mountaintop, but like a child stringing beads in kindergarten — happy, absorbed and quietly putting one bead on after another.

2. Amongst the great magical parade of life, where does your unique passion and imagination find its focus? For me one area is wild animals. But go deep into your own heart and find out where the magic of living really comes alive for you, because that’s what you want to be writing about.

3. Be persistent. Don’t give up. Remind yourself that you have a unique gift to give this world through your writing, and let nothing stop you giving your gift.

4. Be genuine. Personally, I believe this is the most important aspect of all. There’s no harm, of course, in listening to experts, going to writing classes etc. But at the end of the day you will be most pleased with your efforts when you know in your heart that you expressed the highest and best that is in you, in the most interesting fashion you could.

So long and good luck.

Christopher Foster is a writing consultant who makes budding writers shine, a former newspaper reporter and editor, and author of five books. He is a happy member of the A-List Blogger Club, where he has learned much from his friend Mary Jaksch, and started blogging in May 2009. Read more of his writing at The Happy Seeker. Christopher, who is 79, has also created an online eCourse named “The True Promise of Aging.”

Join Leo Babauta and Mary Jaksch in their spectacular training environment for bloggers: the A-List Blogger Club.

Creative endurance

A guest post from Tom Meitner at The Practical Nerd

Imagine somebody who’s halfway through a 5K race. His chest is heaving, his stomach is tight, he can barely lift his feet off the ground. His body slouches, and he stops running. Frustrated, he thinks to himself, I wasn’t cut out to be a runner, and he quits the race.

Sounds pretty common, right? Those of you reading who may hate running might feel this is a very relatable story. You might even feel sorry for a guy who has worked so hard to race and failed.

Okay, but how does this change your perspective? Imagine a guy who quits a 5K race halfway through it, going through the exact same scenario as the guy above, but he never trained a day in his life? How does your opinion change?

See, when you decide to run a race, there is an implication that you’re going to train. It’s the same for anything else – a girl who wants to play the guitar, or a newlywed that wants to cook dinner. Every one of those activities implies a certain amount of practice to get it down. That means training your body to do something it’s never done before – like running a 5K – or teaching your brain how to do something correctly without thinking – like playing an instrument.

And yet, so many people get frustrated with our writing that we quit – and we never really train for it.

Writing prompts are a writer’s training plan. For those of you unfamiliar, writing prompts are a series of statements or topics that are designed to drop you into freewriting. Sometimes they are fiction-based, and sometimes they are to bring out personal reflections. But by going through those writing exercises, your brain learns how to write better and stronger pieces, which pushes you further towards your writing goals.

You may even be surprised at how writing prompts teach you different ways of organizing your thoughts. That change in perspective can help you find that story idea or blog post topic you were looking for.

Find a book of prompts.

On my bookshelf in my office, I have several books of different kinds of writing prompts – like The 3 A.M. Epiphany or The Pocket Muse. Some are more lighthearted, like The Write-Brain Workbook and The Writer’s Book of Matches. When I’m ready to do a little freewriting to help train my writing brain for the longer pieces I’m working on, I’ll grab one of these off the shelf, open it to a random page, and pick a prompt to write about for a bit.

Schedule a time to do it regularly.

Just about any exercise program you tackle will recommend that you set aside a specific time every day (or every other day) to get into the habit of exercising. You also need to do this for writing. Starting a new habit is hard to do, so schedule it. Pick a time where you have no distractions and can sit and write, uninterrupted, for a specific period of time.

Set a target word count (or time).

When you go out for a run, you try to plan how long you’re going to be out there. Maybe you’d like to knock out 3 miles, or just see how far you can get in 25 minutes. The point of setting those goals is to push yourself farther than you did the previous day. That’s how you get in shape. When you write, set a goal for yourself, and make it a little uncomfortable. That way, you know you’ll be pushing yourself to be your best.

Find a favorite method of publishing your freewrites.

It could be public or private. You might just want to hop over to WordPress or Blogspot and strike up a small blog. Maybe you feel at home with a pen and a nice notebook. Perhaps you enjoy the simplicity of a Word document. The correct method is one that you are going to use on a consistent basis. For me, I like my Tumblr blog for simple freewriting exercises. I’m okay with making them public. You might prefer to keep them private – and that’s okay too.

Remember, the point of a training day isn’t to run a 5K at race pace – it’s to get your body used to running and building up your endurance. By that same token, a freewriting session isn’t there to force you to crank out the works of Shakespeare – it’s to help your brain think of new ways to write, and to help you discover how to organize your thoughts better. Some days will look like rough masterpieces. Other days will be ridiculous and disorganized. But every day is useful, and they will all work together to make you a better writer in the end.

Tom Meitner blogs about reaching your goals at The Practical Nerd, and publishes a monthly digital magazine on chasing your dreams at HustleLife. He feeds himself and his wife with his freelance writing work, and dreams of publishing a book someday.

Join Leo Babauta and Mary Jaksch in their spectacular training environment for bloggers: the A-List Blogger Club.

Boost your creativity

A guest post by Cheryl Craigie of  The Manageable Life

It seemed so easy at first, didn’t it?

Your blog posts came fast and furious. You were excited and inspired. The words came easily.

Then one day you went to your creative well and it was dry—not damp, mind you, but Sahara Desert dry.

As a survivor of the “dry well syndrome,” I can tell you that that this happens to all of us at some point. But it’s not you, it’s your brain.

First, the bad news:  Evolution is working against you.

Your brain evolved to be an efficient machine—it looks for easy, familiar answers based on past experience.  This works well most of the time, but because of that very success it is hard for the brain to break out of old thinking patterns and generate new ideas on command.

So sitting at your desk and commanding your brain to fill the well without doing anything to prime the pump is probably not the best strategy.

Now the good news:  The brain can learn new ways of thinking and create new neural connections.

Neuroscientists used to believe that your brain was fully formed by early adulthood and nothing you did could change it. But that conventional wisdom has been overturned in recent years.

Studies show that the brain is actually “neuroplastic,” which simply means that it is continually shaped and molded by experience–even well into old age. So you can improve your brain’s ability to think creatively by simply providing the proper stimulation.

4 ways to keep those ideas flowing

1. Use your brain’s reticular activating system (RAS)

The RAS is the part of the brain that acts as a filtering system, regulating what information reaches your conscious perception. You probably experienced it when you bought a new car and then suddenly noticed all the other cars like yours on the road. You never saw them before because they simply weren’t on your radar screen.

Deploy your RAS when you have a vague idea of a blog topic, but don’t know how to develop it.  Making a mental suggestion, like “ways to achieve happiness” is enough to get your RAS working. Then, while you are going about the rest of your day, your RAS is on the job.

It constantly scans your environment ready to bring to your attention interesting twists on material you’ve read, experiences you’ve had, and memories you’ve forgotten.  All of this happens without you having to pay conscious attention.

Remember to write the good stuff down when the RAS brings it to your attention.

Some may call the ideas that surface serendipity, coincidence or synchronicity, but most likely it’s just your RAS doing its job.

2. Think in high definition video

Because the brain seeks efficiency first, it provides only the minimum information needed to perform the task at hand.  When asked to imagine a beach scene, the brain will conjure up an image that looks like a postcard.

The key to improving your creativity and problem-solving ability, however, is training your brain to engage its full perceptual range. You need to be thinking in high definition video, evoking the sights, sounds, smells and emotions associated with a beach experience.

Visualizing in high def allows you to fully enter the scene and search for new information.

3. Embrace new experiences and learning opportunities

Going about your normal routine does nothing to shake the brain loose from it evolutionary limitations.

Challenge your brain so it can build new neural connections.

Provide it with new experiences and learning opportunities–it’s also a much more interesting way to live.

For example, the initial frustration that occurs when undertaking a new sport, along with the unbearably slow pace of improvement can be used in a post about the emotions you’ll face and patience you’ll need to make changes in your life.

You can also expand your brain power by doing simply exercises that force your brain to search for new insight.

Building Connections Exercise:  Pick three random words—if you can’t think of any, just open a magazine or book, close your eyes, and point—then imagine (in high def video, of course) how you could turn them into a blog post.

4. Use creative visualization

Athletes use creative visualization all the time. They visualize in meticulous, high def detail how they will prepare for, start and win the race. They do this not because it’s a fun exercise, but because it works.

The same areas of your brain light up whether you are actually doing the work or just thinking about it.

So go ahead.

Imagine yourself encountering a dry spell.

See yourself employing some of the techniques discussed. Your brain is learning what success looks like and it will work hard to create the right connections so you can succeed.

Becoming an idea-generating machine is well within your reach. All it takes is some trust in the process and a little practice priming the pump.

Then get out of the way and let those ideas flow.

Have you used any of these techniques or do you have other suggestions about how to move past creative blocks?

If so, please share so we can learn from your experience–and grow some new neural connections, too!

Cheryl Craigie is a former broadcaster and foundation executive turned blogger who is fascinated with the power of the brain. She shares her insights about how to choose a better, more satisfying life at The Manageable Life.

Join Leo Babauta and Mary Jaksch in their spectacular training environment for bloggers: the A-List Blogger Club.