Identify and overcome how your mind hinders your writing progress
One of the most challenging aspects of writing can be getting out of your own way. Or rather, getting out of your mind's way.
Our minds—brilliant and beautiful—can also be baffling.
Have you ever found yourself thinking about a story idea, wanting to pull out a book or prompts, or hearing about a writing group and feeling an inner spark, only to find you've instantly buried the impulse and might have even forgotten all about it? If so, that's a strong indicator that your mind is getting in the way of your writing.
There are so many ways this can happen.
High level, our minds brilliantly analyze and solve problems, come up with solutions, manage emotions, and remember. They're also designed to keep us safe. By detecting threats and learning from experience, they seek to keep things just so.
Prescribed, tidy, and certain.
And writing as an art form is anything but those things.
Common Ways Our Minds Stop Us
Before we start
So many people get stopped writing before they really even start. This was certainly the case with me for a long, long time. This might look like:
• Prioritizing everything else over writing
• Generating, participating and carrying on in conversations about writing, but not really doing much writing if any at all.
• Taking endless classes and workshops about writing to improve your craft, but never really writing outside the courses or moving beyond them
While writing
When people start writing, they can sometimes get stopped during the process. This is often the case with those who are good at putting their shoulder to the grindstone and making themselves do things, no matter what.
When the mind gets in the way while writing it can look like:
• Writing in a jagged, painful start-stop-edit pattern. Writing a few words, or sentences, and then editing along the way.
• Being drowned out by an internal dialogue that is editing, critiquing, and commenting about the writing as its being written
• Keeping your writing on the surface without dropping into the depths
During and after editing
If we manage to start writing and do a first draft, our minds will then often come in and try to get in the way at this point.
Other ways the mind shows up during and after the editing process can look like:
• Never actually editing, always preferring a fresh page, a new project, rather than working to polish an existing piece.
• Being too precious with what's been written and only considering making grammar or spelling edits
• Giving up on projects before finishing, or being unable to share writing with trusted others
If you recognize yourself in one or more of the situations I've shared, hello! Every person who is interested in writing has been there. And, I'd also say that each situation is nuanced. Just like each of us has creative genius, we each have a unique journey.
Our relationship with our writing varies throughout our writing lives, and our projects or writing pieces move at their own pace.
That said, when people are feeling stuck, it's usually because there are underlying, and largely unconscious, beliefs (or constellations of beliefs.)
A Way to Get Out of Your Mind
To start to explore your mind and your relationship with your writing, here's a short exercise.
Self-Reflection Questions
To determine if your mind is getting in your way:
1. Make space
Set aside a short block of time when you won't be distracted. Make sure you have a pen and paper, or your laptop handy.
2. Get quiet
Spend a few minutes grounding yourself and quieting your mind. You can do some deep breathing, a relaxation exercise or a body scan, whatever it is that helps you settle down and feel calm.
3. Write
Focus on the writing you are interested in doing and answer the following questions with whatever pops into your mind:
• If I had the money, I would…
• If I could write anything and not worry about what anyone thought, it would be…
• If I were creative enough, I would…
• If I just had the time, I would…
• If my writing were good enough, I would…
Once you have your answers, reread them. Did anything surprise you? What if you access could what you wrote without the precondition in the first part of the prompt? In other words, what if you could write a memoir about your childhood experience of living with your father's mental illness if you didn't have to worry about what anyone might think?
The truth is you can.
It just might take a bit of work to unwind the mind and get out of your own way.