Originally I was going to write about creating a series page for your Amazon books today. But I’ve had some stuff crop up this week and I’ve had to postpone that until next week. So instead I’ve repurposed something I wrote several years ago on writer’s block.
In this issue we’re going to look at a strategy/tactic you can use that targets the idea generation part of the writing process. (And yes: there are multiple parts of the writing process that all have their own forms of resistance/writer’s block.)
#1 Let’s Start With Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way
Shortly after it was published I purchased a copy of Julia Cameron’s book The Artist’s Way. And I read it soon afterwards.
On Page 23 I stumbled across this line that really resonated with me:
“Steven Spielberg claims that his very best ideas have come to him as he was driving the freeways.”
The reason this resonated so strongly with me was down to an experience I had in June1992.
I packed up my car and drove from my parents house in England to a ski resort in the French alps. This was two drives in one: the first drive was around 3 hours to get to Dover where I took a cross channel ferry; the second drive from Calais to the ski resort of Meribel took around 12 hours.
During that second spell of driving an epic historical fantasy story idea came to me. By the time the journey was over I had pretty much the whole story in my head:
The cast of characters needed to people the story world and drive the narrative;
The character and societal conflicts that threatened to tear my fictional medieval Kingdom apart;
Religious magic systems;
An epic battle to conclude the story with the death of not one but THREE Kings;
The return of ancient magic to the world;
And even an Arthurian sub-text!
Sidebar: the only other person I’ve heard talk about anything like this was J.K.Rowling and the how the overview of the Harry Potter stories came to her on a train journey.
In the years since that happened I’ve sought to try and understand how that creative high came about and find out how it could be reproduced. Before that though….
#2…Cameron’s Explanation For Why This Happened (For Spielberg) - And Why She’s Wrong
Cameron has this to say about why she thinks driving stimulates creativity:
“This is no accident. Negotiating the flow of traffic, he was an artist immersed in an oncoming, ever-altering flow of images. Images trigger the artist brain.”
That’s not how I see it.
If you’ve ever driven on a French motorway, especially when it’s quiet, the last phrase you’d use to describe it is as “an ever-altering flow of images.”
At non rush hour periods you can drive on motorways in France for an hour without passing another car, or being passed by another car. All you’ve got to look at is the road in front of you that stretches to the horizon and is bounded by field after field after field.
If your car doesn’t have a radio - as mine didn’t - then the conscious part of the brain has literally got nothing to do.
So it goes quiet.
And what happens then is that, because the conscious part of the brain is quiet, the sub-conscious part of the brain (the creative part) has time and space to be heard.
What I’ve found is that if you give the sub-conscious part of brain the time and space to be heard, then it responds by letting ideas percolate to the surface of your thoughts.
At the time, I thought it was a ‘download from the muse.’ And never wondered to try and work out how to deliberately set out to do this. But I’ve had this experience happen so many times on long car journies that I looked for the steps to make this a repeatable process. And if you drive, and if you live near a motorway, you can try this out too:
#3. A Six Step Plan To Try This Out For Yourself
Step #1 - Have an idea of what you want your brain to work on before you start
Is it plot for a book? Is it a screenplay? Is it problems with either of the above? Or non-fiction ideas? Know what you want your brain to ‘work on’ before you even get in the car. I’ve found from trying this process out that if you have an idea of the kind of ideas you want to ‘work on’ then you can get great results with just 90 minutes of driving.
Step 2 - Failing to prepare is preparing to fail
A cliche I know. But there are a few dominos you need to line up to maximise the chances of this working.
Those dominos are: having a full tank of petrol; a bottle of water; a phone in case you break down (which is turned off and out of sight and out of reach); a notebook or journal and a bunch of pens; an MP3 player/smartphone connected to the car stereo for your “creativity music” (more on that in a moment) and make sure you go to the toilet before you get in the car.
Step 3 - Once you hit the motorway, cue up your creativity playlist playing
As I said above, I believe this works because the conscious (read ‘busy’) part of the brain is deprived of stimulation which allows the unconscious and creative part of the brain to do its thing.
If you’re driving on a motorway, especially if it’s not busy, then the repetitive nature of what you’re seeing should take away visual stimulation. The creativity playlist is designed to take away aural stimulation.
For me - and your mileage may vary on this one - I use music that I’ve listened to many times before and, most importantly, music that doesn’t have any words. Cinematic soundtrack music is what I reach for here. Usually that means the work of Hans Zimmer.
This is music that’s written to accompany visual images, it’s not written as standalone music. For me it’s perfect for what I’m trying to accomplish. You may need to experiment here to find something that works for you.
Other possible options include “focus” music that you can get on apps like Brain.fm. They have focus music which has a cinematic soundtrack feel too - that’s quite good. You can only download the tracks from the mobile version of the App though.
Step 4 - Now Head For A Motorway And Drive for 90-120 Minutes
One caveat. I don’t work for anyone so can choose my time of day for this…and ideally I like around 11 Am. That means I avoid any rush hour traffic - in both directions - and as long as there are no unexpected snarl ups then I can get to 70 or 75 mph and just cruise there.
Motorways are intrinsically uninteresting and because the conscious part of your brain is being starved of stimulus then at some point I find that ideas start to bubble up from the subconscious (and more creative) part of the brain. Don’t rush to capture them. Let those ideas bubble. You’ll find they blend and combine and go in new directions.
Because it’s not just raw ideas that will bubble up. It’s new ideas plus connections to existing ideas that you’ll get. If you try and capture those ideas on paper too soon, your subconscious brain won’t have time to make these new combinations and connections.
Step 5 - The Stop And Capture Moment
At some stage you’ll reach a point where it’s time to pull over and capture ideas. For me this is around 90 minutes. I’ll pull into one of the motorway service stations and sit in the car park and spend 10 to 15 minutes writing enough of the ideas down that I can access them again by referring to my notes.
Step 6. Carry On With your Journey And/Or Turn Around And Go Home.
Now I often use the excuse of visiting my Father - who lives 3 hours away - to do this process. And often when I’m completing the journey to his house I get a few more stray thoughts. Sometimes I capture those too when I get to his house.
The last time I visited him was December I came back with about 10 pages of notes scribbled in an A4
#4 The Ride Out
This process works for me.
Every time I use it.
It could work for you. My advice is to try it out.
If it doesn’t work for you take the salient points and try and create your own process. Those salient points being: A playlist that your brain associates with creativity; nothing for your conscious brain to do to give space for the sub-conscious brain; a pen and paper to take notes.
Try it out and let me know how you get on.
Practicing The Write Stuff Issue #9
Touch wood in the next Issue I’ll get round to dealing with creating Series pages for Amazon books. I’ve already identified three or four examples to learn both what not to do and what to do….and I’ll try and turn that into a framework that will be featured in Issue #9.