 Author Intrusion: My Beautiful Reward Cliff Fazzolari, author of House of Miracles, writes "If someone were to ask me about how to live a successful writing life, I suppose that I would have to say that there is a lot to endure..." Read More Falklore Tyler Oaks on the Move: The Write Mind: |
No Payne No Gain: Writer's Block IV
In Writer’s Block I we learned that tension causes writer’s block and the more one tries to consciously force oneself to write the greater the resistance because writing is a subconscious endeavor. In Writer’s Block II we learned the subconscious can be programmed to build confidence and focus. Confidence is knowing you are going to be successful before you act and focus is that single mindedness that drives us toward a target or goal. Confidence and focus can be programmed through the subconscious via pre-living. Pre-living is actually living the success before it happens. In Writer’s Block III we learned the creative subconscious drives us toward our picture. We can not change the creative subconscious but we can change our picture. We can trick our brain into believing we are something we are not.
To activate our brain into realizing a new picture, that is, a picture of us writing, thinking and creating we follow 6 basic steps to programming the mind.
1. Get a Picture of What You Want. Here you see yourself as a creative productive author.
2. Clarify the Desire in Time and Effort. Programming the mind takes time and a commitment. You must be willing to pay the price. In other words, you must spend time programming the mind just as you used to spend time honing your writing and thinking skills.
3. Put it in Perspective. We are talking writing here, not life or death. There are lots of things out there that are more important than writing. List all the things you are thankful for and put writing in its proper place.
4. Engage in Self-talk. Self-talk is to be first person, present tense, positive and action or emotionally oriented. It must be in your own words. Examples like, “I like myself as I write” “ I see myself as a creative author” “I am thrilled to see others reading and enjoying my work” You engage in self-talk as you write letters to loved ones, draw pictures or write notes of places you want to go, doodle aimlessly, etc.
5. Read Self-authored Affirmations. Write six affirmations, put them on cards and repeat them over and over for ten seconds twice a day. Ten seconds in the morning and ten seconds at night. The affirmations need to be profound and come from deep within. Make the affirmations generate pre-living experiences. Something like, “I take great pride in my writing and have a positive expectancy of the future” “I respect myself and know I am a worthy, capable and valuable author” “I know ideas will flow from within and I take all setbacks as temporary”
6. Measure the Outcome. Make copies of every letter you write or picture you draw and tabulate your productivity. Display letters you get from persons writing you in return. As you see actual progress this reinforces the creative subconscious to activate the homing device that drives your behavior toward success.
The 6 steps are simple to understand but hard to do. You can beat writer’s block but truthfully it is better not to get it in the first place. Writer’s Block V explains how to avoid this dreaded condition.
Dr. James Payne, a nationally-recognized scholar, educator and speaker, is a professor of Special Education at the University of Mississippi and a Fulbright recipient. He is the developer of the PeopleWise Event Management System and the PeopleWise Profile System.
