Chapter 8

Fuel Your Writing Brain

Get Into a Writing Groove

When writing Tropic of Cancer in 1932–1933, novelist Henry Miller compiled a list of writing “Commandments.” Here are six items he put on that list:

1. Don’t be nervous. Work calmly, joyously, recklessly on whatever is in hand.

2. Work according to Program and not according to mood. Stop at the appointed time!

3. When you can’t create you can work.

4. Concentrate. Narrow down. Exclude.

5. Forget books you want to write. Think only of the book you are writing.

6. Write first and always. Painting, music, friends, cinema, all these come afterwards.

So you’re up and running with your novel and writing is going well—until it doesn’t. Around fifty pages in (if not sooner), most writers lose that first rush of wind. I’m not saying those first fifty pages are easy to write—because they’re not—but around page fifty-one, writing a novel or nonfiction book (or play or screenplay) becomes a long-distance marathon. To write novels and other long works you need the ability to push through when inspiration flags, you’re doubting every writing decision you’ve made, the pleasure wanes, and there’s nothing to do but just keep writing. Because it can be such a long haul and often leave you feeling like you lost your way, almost all writers experience a muddle in the middle—a severe and dangerous case of self-doubt when their vision, their premise, their characters, the plot, their ability to pull it off—everything—seems dubious. There’s no easy solution for losing steam. You just have to doggedly push through every ounce of resistance and keep writing, using all the prep work you’ve done to keep pushing toward the end.

Successful, published writers have found a way—to fuel their brain—to keep themselves motivated, sustain focus, and persistently push through to the end. Like Henry Miller (as above), you may want to write a list of “Commandments” to keep you motivated when spirits or energy flag—because they will. In this chapter, we’ll discuss ways you can keep your brain brimming with energy, inspiration, fortitude, and persistence from page fifty-one to “The End.”

Selectively Focus Your Attention

Selective attention has the potential to be a powerful cognitive strategy—perhaps even the most essential cognitive strategy—when it comes to achieving writing goals. When you purposefully focus your attention on a writing task, you are calling forth the full intellectual power of your frontal cortex to assist, akin to calling in the troops. Also, people who can direct their attention are better at remembering things and figuring out what new information means and how they can use it; that is, they are better at metacognition and higher-order thinking processes. The challenge: Limit sensory stimulation and emotional distractions, both of which erode focus.

The three brain components involved in selective attention when you are writing are:

1. The alerting network receives sensory stimuli and signals the brain to pay attention to information.
2. The orienting network processes incoming information and focuses the brain on what needs to be done.
3. The executive network weighs information and enables the brain to prioritize among competing brain activities. This thinking occurs in the prefrontal cortex and anterior cingulate. It’s basically command central, activated when your higher thinking has to decide whether what you’ve been focused on should be superseded by a new activity. It also activates when you have to pay attention to something unusual—something that isn’t habitual—and decide if it’s good, bad, or neutral. It is the system involved in the conscious control of attention, a cognitive function variously termed “effortful control” or “self-regulation.

The ability to regulate one’s attention relies heavily on the ability to consciously inhibit what might be a habitual or more immediately rewarding response and to choose another that is more socially appropriate to the situation at hand—or, when writing, to prioritize what you’ll choose to focus your brain on and set aside everything else to write one scene, and then the next, and so on.

As we discussed in Chapter 7, you can effectively narrow your focus and get down to business faster through the use of meditation, by creating a sacred space, by beginning each writing session with an intention to focus solely on writing and specific goals, and by monitoring your writing process. Now that you’re in the middle and the bloom on the rose has faded, go back and try what worked in the beginning.

But most important, keep doing whatever has worked and try new things to make your writing sessions focused and productive. Remember that pleasure is an important component. Reward yourself after writing sessions—take a walk, take a bath, have a glass of your favorite whiskey, phone a friend, etc. Rewarding success breeds success—particularly for your brain.

Get Into the Habit of Writing

Because writing a novel (or other work of art) takes time—even in the best of circumstances, it’s likely to span a period of months or years—writers have to learn patience and perseverance. When it comes to your writing brain, you want to create a habit of mind that facilitates the ability to delay gratification and sustain effort, over a period of time, working toward goals that aren’t immediate. This ability begins with critical executive functions taking place in your prefrontal cortexes, in establishing a way of thinking that recognizes the complexities of the writing profession and gears up to generate and sustain sufficient focus, dedication, energy, and confidence to create a work of art, promote it, stay strong in the face of rejection, and believe in what you are doing.

Habit of mind requires the engagement of your executive neural network, specifically as it relates to:

• Judgment: Determining that writing a novel will require a long period of time, during which you will have to make judgments about how to best spend your time—when to start, how long to work, what to focus on each day—and about how the work itself is progressing—what’s working or not working in terms of story development, characterization, setting, theme, scenes, dialogue, and so on. Using judgment to narrow your choices helps your brain shine a concentrated light on what you’ve decided needs to get done—and how it needs to get done.
• Ability to Prioritize: Anyone who seriously hopes to write a novel has to be willing and able to make writing it a priority. Life places a multitude of small daily demands on us all. Writers have to consistently choose writing. In the same way your neural network has to weigh the importance of choosing one activity over another, your mind will have to repeatedly and consistently place meeting your writing goals above everything else that’s clamoring for your attention.
• Ability to Sustain Effort: Some writers can lock themselves away and complete a first draft in twelve days (some boast far fewer days), but the vast majority of writers don’t have the fortitude or the opportunity that requires. Most writers also live complicated lives, with a lot of responsibilities, from marriages to children to everyday jobs. To write a novel, you need to plan for—and commit to—a sustained effort that will take place over months, if not years. Rewards will have to come from smaller goals you set and meet, even if your goal is to write only five pages a week.

What you want is to create a practice of writing—similar to a religious practice or a yoga practice—something you choose to do daily, if at all possible. Writing is something you must choose to dedicate your mind, body, brain, and spirit to doing with reverence and devotion. When it comes to your brain, commit to focusing all of your mental facilities to the task, recognizing and rewarding yourself for progress toward the long-term goal of completion. Do your best to honor your commitment to the practice and find ways to link pleasure to fulfillment of daily goals. This way you are embedding and reinforcing the discipline, commitment, focus, and persistence needed to push through the middle to the end of your writing project. When you and your writing practice become as one, anything is possible.

Work Up the Grit to Achieve Mastery

MacArthur Foundation “genius” award winner and research psychologist Angela Lee Duckworth believes that self-control and grit matter more than talent and IQ when it comes to successfully meeting goals. Self-control obviously has to do with the ability to focus, to prioritize, and to literally show up for work each day. Grit, however, goes beyond self-control into obsessively, doggedly, and persistently devoting yourself to a meaningful goal over a period of time in order to achieve some level of mastery of a task many would find daunting—such as writing a book, a play, a screenplay, and so on.

In describing what equals grit in dance, Martha Graham once said what it takes for a mature dancer to make it look easy is “fatigue so great that the body cries, even in its sleep ... and [suffers] daily small deaths.” In other words, mastery requires hard work and grueling practice, practice, practice. Grit is what motivates someone to commit to and stick with an unending round of practice, particularly when failure seems imminent. Keep in mind that feeling confused and frustrated is a sign that you’re on the brink of a breakthrough. If you just keep plugging away and keep straining your writing brain to solve the problem, you will likely create your best work possible.

Grit is separate from self-control, the short-term ability to resist temptations that could interrupt your work; grit is the self-determination that takes you the distance. Studies have consistently shown that being smart, talented, and curious doesn’t guarantee that you’ll reach your full potential. What’s needed is the grit that indicates you’ll work harder and resist setbacks, pushing ever forward until you’ve done your best work.

Create the Mindset to Write

Education researcher and author of Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, Carol Dweck, attributes success to something she calls a “growth mindset.” A growth mindset equates to believing your brain capabilities are malleable, as opposed to being fixed at birth (which, of course, neuroscience has proven to be true). Dweck teaches young children to think of their brains as something that grows and changes, and she provides pictures of neurons making connections so the kids can literally “see” a brain in action. She also shows them videos of older children talking about how their capabilities grew and has the older children write to the younger children about specific ways their brainpower has grown.

Commit to the Mindset

Dweck’s goal is to teach children to accept personal responsibility for the level of self-determination that will drive them to work hard and do whatever it takes to overcome all obstacles to success. She encourages her own children to choose one hard thing they want to do—that requires a level of mastery—and then asks them to commit to deliberate, focused practice in pursuit of their goals, expecting nothing less than vigor and determination. She forewarns them that feeling frustrated and discouraged—experiencing all those small daily deaths Martha Graham described—while working toward a goal that is truly hard to achieve is normal. Rather than quitting when things get hard, she urges them to engage in more deliberate practice.

Recommit to Your Mindset

Writing a book (novel or nonfiction), writing a play, a screenplay, or a TV script is the kind of goal that requires a well-thought-out and long-term commitment. Months will be spent researching, outlining, preparing, writing, and rewriting. A writer should “go in” knowing that it’s going to get hard—very, very hard—requiring far more energy, brainpower, dedication, and flexibility than ever imagined. Everyone experiences some false starts, many rewrites, and times when frustration spikes and quitting seems like the only sane and viable option. Writing is not for sissies, so when it bogs down, think back to how far you’ve come, reward yourself for how much you’ve accomplished, and then consciously recommit to doing whatever it takes to get back on course—even if it’s working twice as hard.

Envision Yourself a Writing Superhero

Which comes first: Being powerful or thinking you’re powerful? According to some scientists, thinking you’re powerful comes first. Studies have shown that feeling powerful changes the way people think in specific ways:

• They are better at focusing on relevant information.
• They are better at integrating disparate pieces of knowledge.
• They are better at identifying hidden patterns.

Basically, when people think they’re powerful, their brains reflect superior “executive functioning,” which also means they are good at concentrating, warding off negative thoughts, and adapting to change. This type of mental flexibility is what makes power players feel like they are powerful. They’re not weighed down by self-doubt and negative self-talk.

Adam Galinsky, a professor at Columbia Business School, reported in the journal Psychological Science that “a sense of power has dramatic effects on thought and behavior.” He found that being in—or experiencing—a high-powered role transforms one psychologically. Here’s how:

• The social roles people in power “play” change their perceptions of themselves. Studies show that people assigned to a managerial role (whether they are truly managers or not) immediately act more decisively, take risks, show more persistence and follow through, and think more abstractly and optimistically. These are all cognitive functions that play a vital role in creative writing.
• Those who experience feeling powerful can re-create the feelings in different situations. Studies have shown that merely remembering a time when you felt powerful in a situation can regenerate those feelings and help you feel powerful in all situations—even during intimidating situations, like script meetings or when negotiating with your editor.
• They can feel powerful by taking a powerful stance. That’s right, stand up, plant your feet onto the floor, and whip those hands onto you’re hips, à la Superman. Studies found that standing or sitting in an expansive or powerful way, helps people to concentrate, to be bolder in their choices, and to have increased abilities to identify patterns, that is, to be mentally sharper.

Time to don that “secret” superhero costume squished into a box in your closet. Time to take on the mantle of being a Super Star Writer. If you have an imagination—and you so do—approach this exercise with an open-minded enthusiasm. You may be surprised how, well, strong, clear, and confident you feel when you sit down to write.

When Writing, Practice Active Sitting

I’m not the first to phrase this, but I love its motivating simplicity: Sitting is the new smoking, linked to increased risk of diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and early death. Slouching while sitting causes physiological changes, weakening tissues and leading to degeneration, but even if you maintain good posture, simply sitting for long periods of time—over time—leads to muscle and tissue degeneration, similar to what happens when one of your bones is set in a cast.

The bad news is that simply hopping up regularly won’t do the trick alone. What’s needed is something called “active sitting.” Here are four ways you can actively sit while actively writing (do each three to four times—or more—during your normal working day):

1. Roll your feet. Get a small massage ball (or anything similar), take your shoes off, and roll your feet slowly over the ball (one at a time or together, if space permits), repeatedly massaging the arch, loosening the ankle and calf muscles, and, more important for your brain, increasing circulation.
2. Pause to do a few wall squats. Plant your shoulder blades and hips against a wall, plant your feet 6 to 8 inches from the wall, and, with your legs about the same width apart as your hips, slowly lower your body down and then push it back up. Do this at least three times.
3. Do a few lunges. Step one leg forward, and lower your other leg, again about a 90-degree angle, and hold briefly; repeat three times for each leg. This helps stretch your hip flexors and quads, which become tense when you sit too much on a regular basis.
4. Straighten up and rotate your shoulders. Working, particularly on a laptop, can lead to rounding shoulders and jutting necks out and forward. Take a few minutes to sit straight over your tailbone, drop your arms to your sides, take a deep breath in, turn your palms outward, and rotate your shoulders back. While holding this pose, widen your hips by rotating your feet out. Hold for ten seconds and repeat ten times.

What’s good for your heart and your body is good for your brain—and exercise may be the most crucial necessity in maintaining brain health, and, unfortunately, as writers, we have to sit more than we like, far more than is good for us. Practice active sitting when working, and remember to reward your hardworking brain with at least a half hour of vigorous exercise a day—whether it’s walking, washing your car, or scrubbing your bathroom: Move it or lose it!

Foster the Flow That Comes When Writing Goes Well

Hopefully all writers experience “the flow” (also known as “the zone”), typically a brief period of time when every aspect of writing progresses easily, the ideas, the words, all the elements required, and even the typing simply floats along, sometimes at a brisk pace, other times at a little slower, but no less productive, pace. It’s a blissful state, one in which time and space appear seamless; sometimes hours pass and thousands of words pour onto the page. When “the flow” dries up, the writer may suddenly feel fatigued and often disappointed. Where did it go? When will it come back? Before we discuss how to create this ideal writing state, let’s describe how you recognize it. When you’re in “the flow”:

• You feel energized, alive with creativity; the closest you’ll come to feeling like you were always destined to become a writing genius.
• Suddenly every impasse you’ve been struggling to breach breaks open.
• Ideas, scenes, and words seem to magically appear (or flow through your fingertips and onto the page, as if your writing brain has banned your distracting ego from the room).
• Writing feels effortless, yet intensely exciting.
• Your productivity skyrockets, so fast you struggle to keep up.
• Time seems to slow, and, after a while, you lose all awareness of time passing.
• Everything you write seems brilliant (though you do not pause to reread anything).
• You feel like the muse you’ve long courted has alighted onto your shoulder.
• Every good idea leads effortlessly to the next good idea.
• You’re barely thinking at all; your writing instincts are at their highest.

Oh, the ecstasy of it all! One could describe this kind of flow as orgasmic or rhapsodic ... and for some it lasts relatively as long. For many, pursuing flow becomes their primary goal, with some even feeling that they’re not really a writer if they can’t “get into the flow” or that they can write only when they are in the flow (hence a lot of excuses for why they aren’t making progress on their project).

But flow is not some esoteric, impossible-to-catch specter that comes and goes without reason. In fact, well-known psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi wrote, in his seminal works on creativity and flow, that it basically comes down to three things: enhancing focus, increasing concentration, and minimizing distraction. He also writes that flow tends to come when we’re feeling particularly challenged by our work. Hardly orgasmic, but then again, what’s good for your brain is good for your flow.

Avoid the Opposite of Flow

The opposite of flow—blocked—is also familiar to every writer I’ve ever met or listened to or read about; even the most prolific writers occasionally bog down. Before we discuss why using “writer’s block” as an excuse is totally bogus, let’s describe how it feels when you’re blocked:

• Every inch forward drags you backwards; it’s like swimming upstream in a river of molasses—or worse.
• You have to force yourself to your writing desk and bully yourself into writing.
• Writing becomes literally painful: headaches, bellyaches, backaches, and even toothaches become a recurring problem.
• You don’t want to talk to anyone about your work in progress; in fact, you don’t want to talk about writing period.
• You are beginning to question your entire premise and your artistic vision.
• You shun hanging out with your fellow writers, who know you’re making pathetic excuses.
• You feel exhausted, discouraged, pessimistic, and caustic.
• You spew petty criticisms about people who seem able to work when you can’t.
• You begin to wonder why you ever thought you were a real writer, or a writer with more than one book, play, movie, poem, or song in you.
• You lapse into depression and overindulge in alochol, drugs, or food.

Small wonder that we all hate feeling blocked. For a writer, it’s about as bad as one can feel—and it happens to the best of us, which you may find reassuring. It has been suggested that writer’s block may be a form of “brain block,” too. Under stress, a human brain will shift control from the cortex to the emotional limbic system—which gets caught up in habitual behaviors and is looking for a quick release from stress—which further inhibits writing, since whatever behavior it indulges in usually does not provide the sought-after “quick fix.” In her 2004 book, The Midnight Disease: The Drive to Write, Writer's Block, and the Creative Brain, Alice W. Flaherty has argued that literary creativity blockage may be a direct function of activity “blockage” in the cerebral cortex.

Rarely, however, is feeling blocked a sign that you aren’t meant to be a writer, particularly if you’ve written a lot up to this point in time, some of it quite good, perhaps published, or perhaps not. The trick is not to buy into the mythology of “writer’s block.” Here’s a simple fact to remember: Writer’s block is not a legitimate excuse for not writing or working on your project. You can be challenged, temporarily stalled, confused, uncertain, underprepared, out of fresh ideas, or even lazy, but you—and your ability to write—are not “blocked.” You may just need to get your cerebral cortex firing again, and I’ve given—and will continue to give—you lots of tips on how to do that.

Bring Back the Flow

Flow happens when what you are doing naturally suits your personality. If you are trying to force yourself to write fiction, for example, and you’re finding that you simply don’t have an affinity for it, flow is likely to remain elusive. If you’re the most talented and prolific novelist on the East Coast, and you love what you do, flow may visit often. That being said, flow also comes when you’ve done a lot of preparation, and both programmed and fired up your brain. There’s no question that your brain plays a starring role in achieving flow, and if primed and rewarded, your brain gets better and better at re-creating flow—or you could just keep waiting around for some magical muse to show up at your doorstep.

The magic, aspiring and/or stalled writers, is in your brain. In the next chapter, we’re going to go into detail about how you can train your brain to achieve flow—and surrender all mythology around “writer's block.”

Focus on Something Else for a While

Even if you have zero affinity for drawing, perhaps you love and appreciate artists who draw beautifully and the breathtaking work that is available via a quick Google search for images. Maybe you own an art book that you bought at a museum exhibit long ago. If so, there’s a good chance looking at the photographs in the book will remind you how stimulating you found that exhibit at the time or how much you enjoyed talking about it with the person who accompanied you to the museum and joined for lunch afterwards. Maybe you’ll also remember how thrilling it felt to see a masterwork up close—the brushstrokes, the brilliance of the color, the originality, the outspoken themes, and the richness of expression that mesmerized your senses. Maybe you’ll recall a distinctly pleasant feeling you experienced while viewing it, like you’d met a kindred spirit.

Why Your Brain Responds to Art

If you've ever been moved by a beautiful piece of art, you’re actually following a natural biological inclination.

We now know that man has been making art for thousands upon thousands of years, using it to tell stories about their lives, but also, it seems, to reap the benefits of appreciating the art itself. Thomas Merton once said, “Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.” And he was really on to something. According to a new field called neuroaesthetics, the human brain is drawn to and uniquely responds to viewing art. Several studies have discovered multiple ways the brain responds to art—and to making art.

• A University of Toronto meta-analysis, published in the journal Brain and Cognition, found that viewing paintings not only “switched on” the visual cortex, but also those parts of the brain linked to inner thoughts and emotions, movement regulation, and learning.
• As reported in the journal NeuroImage, Emory University School of Medicine researchers found that the ventral striatum and the hypothalamus, parts of the brain involved in making decisions, taking risks, and experiencing pleasure, are activated more from viewing paintings than photographs that represent similar themes.

Scientists believe that the brain is more interested—and intrigued—in how an image is depicted than it is in the image itself, hence the activation in cognitive functions. They also found that viewing visual art activates the brain’s reward circuit, which has evolved to provide reinforcement when what you’re doing creates benefits, or pleases, the brain.

Interestingly, studies have also shown that we’re mostly drawn to curved lines rather than hard lines and angles; perhaps because viewing curved lines seems to calm our brains while viewing a sharply angled line is associated with rising tension.

And—to absolutely no one’s surprise—creating visual art is even better for your brain than simply viewing art. A recent German study, which divided twenty-eight newly retired people into two groups, found that those who produced original art displayed significant gains in psychological resilience and “functional connectivity” in the brain than the half that only analyzed paintings. The study's researchers suggested that improvements derived from a combination of motor and cognitive processing, as well as the necessity to stay fully and creatively engaged while working on their art projects.

Also, art therapy has been proven effective in helping people with Alzheimer's disease and dementia, because making art stimulates the senses, triggers memories, and invites social connections through conversation.

Like writing, creating art engages your brain and your mind in multiple ways. The static nature of paintings, for example, like novels, invites your brain to explore its appreciation and curiosity in your own way and time, and from different angles. You can ponder not only how the artist created a unique work, but also explore the meanings and emotions viewing it generates.

Find Other Ways to Stimulate Creativity

When your mind is mush or ideas are not flowing, and you suddenly despise your characters or start second-guessing yourself and doubting the importance of completing the work, the simple fact is that your brain needs a rest or inspiration. The simple act of making a cup of tea (or pouring a glass of wine), retrieving that beautifully printed art book, and spending an hour on the couch (feet up!) will not only soothe and refresh your writing brain, but will also awaken your senses. Indulge for a while, savoring each aspect of the respite, and you’ll likely return to writing with a more lively sense of setting, design, or beauty—and your writing may be infused with more depth, better descriptions, and the slowness that comes with pausing to appreciate nuance, shape, color variations, and so on. In admiring the way lines flow and the subtlety of how colors blend, you’ve relieved your brain of the necessity to think—and it will definitely reward you.

If art or visual appreciation doesn’t do it for you, then do something that stimulates your senses:

• Go to an auto or boat show to admire the latest sleek designs.
• Go to a movie or a play to soak up someone else’s brilliance.
• Visit your favorite bookstore just to run your hands over the books.
• Spend a few hours playing music or listening to music that thrills your soul.
• Pull on waders or rent a rowboat and go fishing on a quiet, cold lake.
• Take a walk deep into the woods where the hushed silence and sound of crackling twigs underfoot will soothe your frazzled nerves.
• Walk along a seashore or river, searching for shells or rocks that feel good in your hands.
• Knit a scarf or bead a necklace or sand down a dresser you want to refinish or cook a gourmet meal full of delicious smells.

In other words, do something (other than write) that pleases you because it soothes your brain and stimulates your visual, auditory, taste, or tactile sensations.

The next day (or hours later, if you feel like it), go back to writing as usual, and you’ll likely find that your brain is fired up and ready to focus. You may even discover some surprising connections occurred while you thought you were off having fun, not thinking at all.

Writers on Craft

“When I was in the middle of writing Eat Pray Love … I fell into one of those pits of despair that we will fall into when we’re working on something that’s not coming and we think ‘this is going to be a disaster, this is going to be the worst book I’ve ever written—not just that but the worst book ever written ... ”

—Elizabeth Gilbert

“There’s a marvelous sense of mastery that comes with writing a sentence that sounds exactly as you want it to. It’s like trying to write a song, making tiny tweaks, reading it out loud, shifting things to make it sound a certain way. It’s very physical. I get antsy. I jiggle my feet a lot, get up a lot, tap my fingers on the keyboard, check my e-mail. Sometimes it feels like digging out of a hole, but sometimes it feels like flying. When it’s working and the rhythm’s there, it does feel like magic to me.”

—Susan Orlean

“If a writer stops observing he is finished. But he does not have to observe consciously nor think how it will be useful. Perhaps that would be true at the beginning. But later everything he sees goes into the great reserve of things he knows or has seen. If it is any use to know it, I always try to write on the principle of the iceberg. There is seven-eighths of it underwater for every part that shows. Anything you know you can eliminate and it only strengthens your iceberg. It is the part that doesn’t show. If a writer omits something because he does not know it then there is a hole in the story.”

—Ernest Hemingway