Misc. Zen Thoughts

Misc. Zen Thoughts

I got the blues thinking of the future, so I left off and made some marmalade. It's amazing how it cheers one up to shred oranges and scrub the floor. —D. H. Lawrence

 

The standard advice when the publishing/writing blues hit is to write. I prescribe to that advice 90% of the time, too, but…when you've bowed your head and forged ahead, you've kept at the page, writing even when you don't feel like it and what you've written just plain stinks, you have to try something else. You know: shred oranges or scrub floors or both.

Get out of your head, get off your butt, do something physical. Ideally, something with sounds and smells and feels. Marmalade or gardens, hikes or swims. Try that!

 

Don't think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It's self-conscious, and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can't try to do things. You simply must do things. —Ray Bradbury

 

All you have to remember is being a teenager, walking into the hangout, worrying whether someone would notice you, or no one would and the certainty both were equally bad. There's a way you walk and scour the room, hold your body and focus your gaze. It's so obvious you're nervous. That's how your writing comes across when you think too much. Every word shows it. Don't do that!

 

What, then, is your duty? What the day demands. —Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

 

What does your day demand to take that next step on your way to your writing goal? Is it edit? Brainstorm? Put in your word quota? Fill the well? Do it!

 

When you've got it, there's no place for it but a poem. —Wu Pen

 

Trying another genre from the one you normally write. It stirs your mind, bringing to the top fresh, new thoughts and ideas. No matter what you write or how well you write, every writer needs that stir once in a while. Stir that!