Chapter 6

Nurture Your Writing Brain

Lay the Groundwork for Success

“I always get up and make a cup of coffee while it is still dark—it must be dark—and then I drink the coffee and watch the light come ... Writers all devise ways to approach that place where they expect to make the contact, where they become the conduit, or where they engage in this mysterious process. For me, light is the signal in the transition. It’s not being in the light, it’s being there before it arrives. It enables me, in some sense.”

—Toni Morrison

Now that your marvelous brain has generated brilliant ideas, and you’ve dutifully recorded them on paper, there are specific writing exercises that will lay the groundwork your brain needs to assist you in the smooth and successful completion of your project. Hopefully your brainstorming sessions have given you a multitude of ideas, some of which you have used to create at least a beginning, broadly focused outline of sorts. I hesitate to use the actual word outline, as many feel averse to that process, even though it also works for many writers. Just because you create an outline doesn’t mean you have to adhere to it, but many do find that it creates a road map they can refer to when feeling lost halfway through the novel.

Purposefully Invite Your Brain Into Your Writing Space

Your brain has thousands upon thousands of years in development, yet it still remains primitive in many aspects, one of which is being on constant alert. Our limbic brain’s (the lower, more primitive and emotional brain) attention is often on scanning the horizon for incoming danger. It relies upon our primary senses—sight, smell, sound, touch, taste—to notice danger and send alert messages to the higher brain (the thinking neocortex, where executive functioning occurs), which then decides what to do to remedy the situation.

Distract Your Limbic Brain

What this means in terms of writing is that your limbic brain likes to keep all the sensory information pouring in and stay primed for lifesaving action, which makes it a challenge to truly focus your brain on something as benign as sitting at a desk, writing—work that requires a narrowing focus. As you move into those first moments of writing, your limbic brain is still scanning the room, as if it expects a villain to emerge from the dusty books stored just behind you. This is a slight exaggeration, of course, but a valid point: If you want to increase your ability to focus, invite your brain into the safety of your writing space and reassure it that you will be safe while working (create an affirmation, such as: This is my safe place and no danger will occur as long as I’m working) to help it narrow its focus to what must be done.

Establish a Clear Separation

Some writers like to perform rituals before they begin to write, whether its lighting candles, playing classical music, dancing madly to loud rock ‘n’ roll music, chanting, meditating, or praying. Some clean their desks, close the door, and turn off their cell phone (a good idea!). No matter which ritual or mind-clearing behavior you embrace, what’s important is that you develop a signal to your limbic brain that this is a safe (and sacred) space where you’ll be focused on thinking about words and stories. The more you reinforce writing rituals, the sooner your limbic brain will connect that transition from high alertness to confidence in safety, which will free up your cortex to write.

What is This Work Really About?

We spent some time in the previous chapter deciding what your work is truly about, and we’re going there a second time because this is an aspect of storytelling that frequently changes. You think you are writing about a brother betrayed by another brother who never recovers and flees to Nova Scotia to become a poet, or a woman who lost her herself in raising three daughters and has to reinvent herself when her husband dies shortly after the last child moved out, but are you?

You think you are writing about wounded males in a modern society who have difficulty connecting to their brothers, or about a modern woman who surrendered feminism for family and now has to empower herself to create a new life in a confusing new world; but as you work through specifics in this chapter (or while writing), you'll likely find that what you thought was the primary focus is no longer external betrayal, but how one man sabotages himself; or how a woman remarries as quickly as possible so she doesn’t have to reinvent herself, and all the repercussions those choices bring.

Unfortunately (or fortunately), what and why becomes less obvious as writing progresses. Just as your characters begin to feel like shape-shifters, going off on their own to do things you did not have in mind, the what and why of the work often morphs in response to plot twists you hadn’t anticipated—or in response to feelings that arise as you write, as the story reveals itself.

Revisiting the story question of what it’s really about helps:

• tap into and refine your passion for the subject—and for writing;
• solicit specific ideas for structure, plot, characters, theme, and so on;
• increase and tighten the neuronal network based on your motivations;
• help your brain solidify what’s important and what’s not important;
• motivate you to keep moving forward when you hit roadblocks.

Grappling with these story questions can be highly productive, as doing so both narrows the focus (thereby offering up specific plot points and character arcs) and reinforces your reason for wanting to write this particular work. Knowing—and preferably feeling—your primary motivation for choosing this particular story, these particular characters, in these particular situations is what will inspire you to write whenever time allows and to keep writing when your energy and enthusiasm sags in the middle or drags out the end.

Write Detailed Character Bios, Specify Each Character’s Arc

The next step is to nail down your characters: Figure out what your central characters will do and what will happen to them. Many writers find it very useful to write character bios, detailing when and where each main character was born, his family circumstances, what shaped his character, any traumas he experienced, what motivates him, how he sabotages himself, etc. Even if it feels forced, the process can result in greater insights into your character’s personality and often provides surprising and welcome ideas for plotting. Remember exercises like these also bolster your neuronal networks, linking personal history, reading and research memories, and original thoughts.

After you’ve given thought to the characters and the role each will play, it’s good to focus on the character arc that your hero or heroine will journey across, an aspect of writing that is essential to good storytelling. The main character should be in a different place from where he or she began, and the changes should result from conscious actions the character has taken—or not taken—throughout the journey, from page one to the end.

Again, many of these elements may change as you write, but just thinking about them—intently focusing your brain on them, mapping them out on paper—will spur ideas. Given the proper input, your neurons will begin sparking and making surprising connections.

Create a Detailed Plotline and/or Outline

Now that you’ve done a lot of the groundwork, it’s time to focus on the plot, or what will happen in your novel (or screenplay, or whatever you happen to be writing) that propels your hero or heroine forward—or backward. Some people love to outline; others believe creating outlines stifles their creativity. If that’s the case with you, then please consider that you don’t have to draw up an official or traditional outline. Formulating a sequence of what’s going to happen, and which actions lead to succeeding actions, gives your brain a template that will help the writing flow. It’s good to “feed” your brain ideas about the structure (typically a three-act structure) and the various plot points and plot twists so it begins to create a rhythm for the particular story you’re working on.

So if you’re one of those writers who loves to outline and your brain readily responds to the blueprint you create, then by all means outline to your heart’s content. If you’re resistant to the process, at least be open to thinking about the major events and how they will escalate as the story builds. All this can, and likely will, change as you write, but what you’re doing is giving your brain something to ponder, to dream about, and to put into action when the actual writing begins. You are helping your brain establish a story pattern, a rhythmical standard that will work small miracles when the real writing begins.

Visualize Characters, Scenes, Settings in Motion

The next step is to take your brain on a visual journey. Although lying back to visualize your characters, scenes, and setting may feel like the sort of daydreaming others (and perhaps you) consider nonproductive, your brain has remarkable abilities when it comes to visualization. Studies have shown that visualizations can effectively trick your brain into thinking what it just experienced in thought only is real, particularly if you break down the visualizations into specific, detailed, sequential images (visualizing them as they would happen, in your mind’s eye, so to speak).

The value in this exercise is that you are further familiarizing your writing brain with what you hope to achieve in terms of creating unique and memorable characters, embellishing setting to create a desired mood, and imagining a set of sequential actions that will occur in specific scenes. Visualization also aids in memory, so you’re likely to remember that great scene longer, too. You are giving your brain images that it can call upon when you sit down to write what you’ve already described to it in detail. Again, how you ultimately write the story may (and likely will) change, but the visualization process helps you bring your ideas into sharper focus, and all this preparation can help you become a more creative, productive, and successful writer.

Create an Organizational System That Fits Your Writing Brain

No one knows your brain like you do. Some people need absolute organization, a clean desk, silence, hours spent alone; some people are unfazed by noise or mess and can snap into writing mode within seconds. This exercise is about noticing what works for you, what circumstances result in your most productive work.

Some writers use writing software to help organize their thoughts, particularly in relation to plots and scenes. Most of the software requires a learning curve, but if that’s something that appeals to you, it’s worth checking out. These can be very useful if you’re writing a historical novel or creating fantasy and science fiction, which often require creation of special worlds, a complex plot, and a cast of characters—far more complicated than writing a novel with a far less complicated plot and ten or so characters. Software programs include WriteItNow, WriteWay Pro, Power Structure, Contour, and Dramatica Pro. Be sure to read online reviews to make sure the one you choose is right for you.

Try Using Note Cards

Some prefer using note cards and a bulletin board or large dry erase board. Some (including me) begin with a large spiral sketchbook in which they write down what will happen in each “act,” (first, second, and third or beginning, middle, end) and then break down each section into scenes. Simple wording that is also clear is fine, just enough to remind you later why you included the scene, what is the primary reason for the scene, what occurs, and what results. Once you feel like the story is taking shape, transfer the scenes to note cards (one scene description per note card), which you can then lay out on a floor and move around if you need to, which you likely will. This really helps you with pacing and building tension as the story progresses. You will start to see patterns, such as having too many passive scenes in a row or too many action scenes or just too many scenes (or not enough scenes). At this stage, cards make it easier to shift scenes around, to add and delete, and to see connections and missed connections. Spend a lot of time pondering the cards/notes and while you do, imagine that your writing brain is mapping the storyline and creating a database dedicated to this work, which it is.

Figure Out What Works for You

Some writers like to be organized, which means that this works for them. What you have to figure out is what works for you. If you don’t know, or feel that whatever you’ve been doing is not working, experiment, think outside the box, do something new. If you always work at home, take your laptop to a coffee shop for an afternoon; if you never plan ahead, try planning three scenes, visualizing them, writing down the basics, reviewing them before going to bed, and writing them the next morning (before you go to work at an outside job or do anything that requires brainpower). You will soon discover the process that leads to increased creativity or productivity—for you.

Stay Flexible

The goal is to create an organizational method that fits your brain. Once you figure it out, your brain will reward you with productive writing sessions. And nothing ever has to be written in stone. Some books, projects, or different genres have special needs that are specific to that audience, which is something to consider when you begin the programming exercises.

Maximize Your Brain’s Organizational Skills

Your brain never sleeps. While you’re consciously zonked out and in REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep, your brain is busy identifying and reinforcing connections between events, sensory input, feelings, and memories you experienced that day. Basically it’s processing, organizing, categorizing, linking, discarding, and saving information—all based on what you consciously (and unconsciously) experienced that day and how that information fits in with prior experiences and what you have been thinking about or observing that day. The process consolidates your narrative (and also the story narrative of your work in progress) and creates “memory links” that are essential to healthy brain functioning. Memory links improve your waking memory; that is, the ability to spark memories that have been embedded deep in your hippocampus. Sleeping also increases brain connectivity or plasticity, which helps you continue learning and growing as you age.

Summon Your Cortex

During the deeper REM phase of sleeping, your brain is finally “free” to back up its database by:

1. consolidating and processing any and all information you’ve learned during the day;
2. forming neural connections that strengthen and consolidate memories;
3. replenishing its supply of neurotransmitters, including chemicals such as serotonin and dopamine. These chemicals help all parts of the brain to stay on track—neither too fast nor too slow—allowing the brain as a whole to hum along, doing the best job it can.

In the REM phase of sleep, the pons, located at the base of your brain, sends signals to the thalamus, which relays them to the cerebral cortex, the outer layer of the brain that is responsible for learning, thinking, and organizing information. The cortex is the part of the brain that interprets and organizes environmental information during consciousness. Scientists believe that the cortex tries to interpret the random signals it receives from the pons and the thalamus, essentially creating a “story” out of fragmented brain activity.

Sleep studies have shown that rats who run a maze during their waking hours form a mental “map” that their brains then “relive” while sleeping, perhaps embedding the memory in its hippocampus for long-term storage. They have discovered that the rats will use the “map” when placed in the maze the following day, as a way to figure out where to go next.

Make Your Desires Known

As such, you may well experience major payoffs for organizing your conscious thoughts before crawling into bed. At the end of each day do the following:

• Assess where you are in the writing process. If you have major story questions, journal about them. If you need inspiration, ask for it. If you feel the story’s bogged down, ask for new ideas, and so on.
• Sketch out the important elements of the scenes you’ll write next, using your software program, journal, note cards, or a dry erase board. Nothing elaborate is needed—just basic information about who’s in the scenes, where they take place, what happens, and so on.

Before you go to bed, spend five to fifteen minutes reviewing your notes (and again the following morning) to prep your brain. This doesn’t mean that you have to adhere to what you’ve created, but putting that much thought into what you’re going to write—and, in particular, seeing it in print—sparks ideas and makes it easier (and more rewarding) to get to your work space and down to work the next day.

Create a Concrete, Flexible Game Plan for Completion

Another way to get your mind and brain on board is to create a game plan for completion. At this stage, a broad plan will help you tamp down feelings that the task is simply too big or out of your league. Behind the scenes, your brain has been breaking down complicated tasks into small steps since you were born. Huge tasks, such as walking and talking, required the stimulation and coordination of many skills; none were learned overnight and most required lots and lots of practice. You’ll likely remember learning to read and can easily imagine all the steps that went into making the act of reading not only possible but simple. In the beginning stages, your brain had to learn all the symbolism, sounds, and meanings, and then how to string together letters to form words, sentences, and so on. The point being that your brain knows how to learn something new, and one way to facilitate that happening more frequently and with greater success is to tackle the task in steps.

Break It Down into Tasks

Some writers like to write in spurts, to lock themselves away for a period of days and do nothing but write that novel or memoir or screenplay. However, most writers don’t have the luxury of unencumbered blocks of time to spend solely focused on their creative endeavors. Still, if you can free up a few days, you can get a lot done, such as creating the backstory for each of your characters (which constitutes research), writing a chapter, or ironing out kinks in the subplot. When you break down everything that goes into writing an entire novel into simpler components, the writing may feel more manageable. You can regularly set and reach goals, and thereby bolster a feeling of success. Remember, wiring success to writing will make it easier to summon your brain for writing sessions. You’ll be creating a sense of success that will override a tendency to feel overwhelmed.

Realize Books (and Scripts) Take Time

Even though it’s possible to pound out a book (or a play or other work) in two fairly uninterrupted months, most books require a minimum of twelve months and often years to conceive, create, and craft. What you want to avoid, however, is leaving it open-ended, giving yourself a nebulous goal of “however much time it takes” (and thereby never finishing) or setting yourself up to fail. Creating the unrealistic expectation that you can write a novel “in three months,” which may be possible, if you’re an experienced novelist—and a genius—can actually work against you. It’s more helpful to give your brain specific, measurable goals and to reinforce those goals by reviewing them regularly and rewarding yourself for reaching them.

Doing so reminds your brain that you have a specific goal that is important to you and you appreciate how beautifully it’s working. Remember your brain wants to please you and will work hard to do so. Rewards should be pleasurable enough to awaken your brain’s reward center, so it knows to release the feel-good chemicals—dopamine, endorphins, serotonin, oxytocin, and others. This release motivates your brain to repeat the same experience, to seek the same pleasure.

Foster a Feeling of Success

You could decide, for example, that you’ll have all the prep work (as we’ve been discussing) done in a month, all the research done in two months (longer, if it’s a historical or science fiction novel), and that you’ll begin writing in month three and will write one chapter every two weeks. This type of plan will—and should—be individualistic and specific to you, your project, and how much time you have to devote to writing your book (screenplay, play, etc.).

Just remember that speed is not important. What matters is designing a plan that will help you feel successful at every stage and lead you to the finish line. The more successful your brain feels, the better it will perform in helping you meet the goals you have declared most important. Your brain loves feeling successful and rewarded, and will work for you to repeat that feeling over and over again.

Create Specific, Attainable Goals for Getting Underway

If you are, or have been, a journalist for a daily publication, you’ve experienced the rush of adrenaline that comes when the deadline hour approaches and your editor is literally standing over you, waiting for the final product, pushing you to work fast but still do your best work. Your sense of story and facts had better be in place, and your mind had best be fired up and facile enough to pound out the story. You also know the endomorphic rush that comes after, when you’ve met the deadline and done an exceptional job. The upside and downside of deadlines becomes your daily life. Deadlines haunt you and serve you; they make you and break you; they grind you down and lift you up.

Make Deadlines Your Friends

That being said, journalists often enter the world of writing novels (or screenplays or what have you) with a strong work ethic, based largely on feeling equally inspired and agreeable to structured deadlines. Some journalists don’t find deadlines oppressive. Some actually love having a finite goal, a finish line—unless the editor is expecting too much, too fast. In those cases, frustration and resistance may gum up the works, but the deadline itself may still function as a motivation in a way nothing else can.

For many people, however, deadlines become a fire-breathing dragon. I’ve known writers who panic as a deadline approaches, even if they’ve had months to research and write, and the work is far more complete than they think it is. I’ve known writers to have anxiety attacks and insist that they can’t begin to write, let alone meet the deadline.

Flip the Switch to Excitement

The good news for those deadline-phobic, anxiety-prone writers is that all those negative emotions generate energy and focus that can be harnessed. Scientists have confirmed that our brains respond quicker and more attentively to negative emotions—because long ago those negative emotions were likely stirred by an approaching real-life danger in the form of tigers, lions, or bears. In those days, responding quickly to negative stimulants could mean the difference between living and dying, whereas positive emotions were likely signaling that all is well; that is, they were life affirming.

When fear (and adrenaline) surges, it is signaling an opportunity to harness all that brainpower and direct those fired-up neurons where you want them to go—preferably into focusing on completion. Instead of feeling paralyzed, you can choose to feel, as President Obama once chanted to his supporters, “fired up and ready to go.” I’m not suggesting that it’s easy, but it is something you can learn to orchestrate—harnessing and using the energy as fuel to write faster, sharper, more purposefully, and more integrated. Over time, with practice, and knowing that you can consciously choose how to use the heightened mental state, you can train your brain to transform paralysis to productivity. I’m not saying you’ll grow to love deadlines, but you can learn how to use them to your advantage.

When it Comes to Goals, Start Small

Again, what’s most important is setting realistic goals whose accomplishment will create a feeling of success. You want to reward your brain for meeting your goals, and when you set them too high, you create a feeling of disappointment or failure—and you may even use the inability to meet your goals to berate yourself on a regular basis, which is completely counterproductive.

Remember, what fires together, wires together. If you set realistic goals that you continually reach, you are connecting success, and the feel-good brain chemicals (dopamine, endorphins, serotonin, oxytocin, etc.) that replenish your brain when you feel successful, with writing; if you set unrealistic goals, that you always fall short of reaching, you are connecting disappointment and self-defeat with writing. Start with goals you can easily reach, and when you are consistently meeting those goals, you can set new ones a little higher.

The Joys and Perils of Word Counts

It’s lovely that thousands upon thousands of people all over the world are participating in the National Novel Writing Month of November (popularly known as NaNoWriMo). It’s a brilliant concept that has obviously appealed to many aspiring writers, and I know many professional writers who use it to shame themselves into pursuing the creative work that’s always getting shunted for day jobs.

It Can Be a Heady Experience

There’s something extremely appealing about all that writing energy being exercised worldwide, and many are able to write fifty thousand words in November, which surely feels absolutely amazing. Some who write fifty thousand words do go on to complete and sell their novels (The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern, for example), but a whole lot of people either don’t make the goal or, if they do, don’t ever go back and edit what they write.

The NaNoWriMo genius is that it encourages creative writers to unleash all restraints (even thinking) and just pound out thousands of words, every day, no matter what else is going on in their lives. The fifty thousand words they create may very well be filled with fabulous raw material, and, hopefully, all who write fifty thousand words will go back to mine those fields, refine, and shape a novel. At the very least, meeting that fifty thousand-word goal is worth a shot, but you may be wiser to participate in one of their “camps,” when lower word counts (try five thousand to ten thousand words in one month) can be set—and thus more likely successfully achieved.

Link Writing to Success

Writing groups can, of course, run their own competitions to see how many words each participant can write in a month, and often it spurs action. But what may also occur is that the amount of words doesn’t leave them with a completed project, and some will be too hard on themselves for not reaching word counts. Again, they are wiring disappointment—linking a feeling of failure to the act of writing. Better to keep word count goals achievable, focus more on the quality of writing, and reward yourself when you reach your goals. Remember, the more you wire a feeling of success to the act of writing, the easier writing will become.

Lay the Groundwork for Ongoing Success

That said, figure out how many words you can realistically write in a week, commit to the amount, and do your best to meet that goal. Keep doing this, and you are laying the groundwork for success because you are repeatedly training your brain to rise to the occasion and to enjoy writing, in real time, while it’s happening.

Consider Your Brain Programmed

These last three chapters have been all about programming your brain’s “software” for the task of writing, whether it’s a book, movie, play, or any work that requires extended focus over a long period of time. In the next chapter, we’ll focus on reinforcing your own sense of being a writer who successfully writes, which is another step on the road to training your writing brain to become one that conceives, creates, and crafts stories that sell.

Writers on Craft

“I jump up in the morning. I can’t wait to go see what my characters are going to do today. I get wired up. When my character falls in love, I’m in love. When somebody’s heart is broken, or feels jubilation, I feel all of that.”

—Terry McMillan

“I didn’t begin with the idea of publishing a memoir, but as I started getting these memories down, they took over. Writers wait for that moment when the material starts to carry them. It happens more rarely than one wants to think, and you’re a fool if you don’t give in to it when it does—drop everything else and go with it.”

—Tobias Wolff

“I like the physical sensation of writing. It gives me a kind of ruddy vigor, like some sort of exercise you want an award for afterward.”

—Meg Wolitzer

“I can work anywhere. I wrote in bedrooms and living rooms when I was growing up with my parents and my brother in a small house in Los Angeles. I worked on my typewriter in the living room, with the radio and my mother and dad and brother all talking at the same time. Later on, when I wanted to write Fahrenheit 451, I went up to UCLA and found a basement typing room where, if you inserted ten cents into the typewriter, you could buy thirty minutes of typing time.”

—Ray Bradbury