Think Like a Writer

I hate to break it to you but…there is no Muse.

No Goddess of Inspiration. No Voices in the Head. No Miraculous Gift of Words from the Unknown of which you are Conduit. No. Most of the time when the writing comes easy, it’s because your mind consciously or subconsciously has prepared for it in the time you weren’t facing the blank page.

I used to work in creative bursts of two or three weeks of intense writing activity followed by long periods of intense nothing. Until the ideas and writing flowed, I’d be obsessed with capturing them to the point of shutting out everything else, keen to ride the wave, stay in the zone, do whatever it took to milk what I knew would be a temporary creative high before it petered out.

It drove me mental. It also taught me an important lesson:

If I keep waiting for inspiration to strike, writing may or may not happen. But when I actively seek out ideas and prepare myself to be inspired, writing happens every time. The truth is: excellent, sustained writing, like any discipline, requires a certain mindset. And that mindset can be cultivated. You can train yourself to think like a writer and be inspired everyday.

Think of it this way: Painters see the world in colours, brushstrokes, light entering or glancing off of objects, what it reveals, what lies in shadow. Musicians hear compositions in the rustling of leaves, the pattering of rain, the chime of an old grandfather clock. In the same way, writers interact with life and their surroundings in language, metaphors, word-images. The other day I saw a squirrel scurry down a tree trunk. The first thought that came to me was of a bead of grease sliding down a pipe. When I saw a dirty puddle with a streak of oil swirled on it, I had a serendipiditous moment of splashing through a rainbow. Both thoughts triggered ideas for poems.

So how to make sure the writing brain stays sharp and well-oiled with inspiration? Here are my top 5 ways:

1) Open Yourself to Experience:
Deliberately. Intentionally. Unflinchingly. Put yourself in the path of new experiences. They don’t have to be extreme or dangerous. They just have to be new. I always think of B. R. Haydon’s story of Keats coating his tongue and throat with cayenne pepper and chasing it down with wine so he could feel the “delicious coldness of claret in all its glory.” Be Keats. Be alive to a new way of being. Eat food you never have. Talk to people different from yourself. Take on someone else’s skin, characteristics, culture for a bit. It will unlock places in you which will find their way into your writing. The more you introduce and mine your life for experiences, the richer your writing will be.

2) Metaphorize:
Similes, metaphors among other things are the backbone of good creative writing, especially poetry. Here’s an exercise that works for me and helps me condition my writer-thinking skills. Close your eyes. Take three deep breaths. Open them and note the first three things you see. Now generate a metaphor for each of them. Don’t censor or perfect what comes to mind, just make the associations. E.g., the window may be a shifting painting. The black TV screen, a futuristic blackboard. Winter, a vampire sucking on trees. Think in metaphor.

3) Be Observant:
A writer never just looks. A writer looks deeply. Pick something mundane and look for the beautiful in it and vice versa. E.g., a broken shoe with a strong, intact lace. Rust the colour of sunset on the handle of a barrow. Cracks webbing a mirror. Pick something up and notice what about it grabs your attention and why. The best writers seem to have their eye trained for the startling, unexpected detail.

4) Engage Your Senses:
Think with all your senses. Don’t just feel the sand between your toes, smell the sea salt in it, clump it and gauge its weight. It’s not a uniform beige is it? There are black, white, even blue grains in it. What sound does it make when it sssslowly ssssslips through your fingers? How about when you shikka-shikka shake it in a jar? A writer, like any artist, not only observes but interacts with everything to the fullest reach of their senses.

5) Show up:
Training yourself to think like a writer means showing up everyday to write. Everyday. Even when you don’t have anything to say to the blank page other than doodles and your name in sans serif fonts. A huge part of thinking like a writer is to take your craft seriously and being prepared to put in the work on the days when the going is tough. The discipline of showing up at your desk, ideally at the same time everyday, conditions your writing brain to perform. Be alive to your peak creative time. Use the fallow period for revising your work so you still stay engaged with your writing.

Well, this wraps it up for now. Do give me your thoughts in the comments section. Until next week!