Meditations for Writers

By Sally Morem
o Set yourself up for creative thoughts. When at the computer, do
something else thats rather boring. Stare at the wall or the floor. Type in
any strong thoughts relating to a writing project that pop into mind.
o Learn to appreciate and create unexpected connections between two or
more apparently unconnected things or actions.
o Use your undirected stream of consciousness to generate novel thoughts
and insights. Write all of them down.
o Play restful space music while brainstorming writing ideas. This will give
your mind soft focus conducive to the flow of ideas.
o Sharply focused thought helps us to perceive what is similar in a wide
assortment of things. Use it when studying a massive amount of material
on your subject.
o Soft focus makes available many aspects of one thing. Use it when
generating novel ideas.
o Sharp focus = Abstract thought
o Soft focus = Concrete thought
o Sharp focus = Enlightenment thought
o Soft focus = Romantic thought
o Consider Isaiah Berlins writings on Romanticism and combine them with
these insights on sharp and soft focus.
o Consider creative thinking as a push-pull beat of sharp and soft thoughts.
Examining many thoughts by one criterion, then one thought by many
criteria. Alternate slowly. Alternate rapidly between the two modes.
o With regard to sharp and soft, what is mental modeling of the world?
Creating images in the brain that resemble things in the real world.
Thinking then becomes remembering what these things have in common
with one another and how many aspects one thing has that makes it that
thing and not another thing. Mental modeling is found in sharp focus, and
is found far less in soft focus.
o What sorts of memories will arise when you read one word, or two, or
three? Find out. Draw out random words from a hat, or point to words on
a page in a book chosen at random. Write down anything that comes to
mind. When focusing on two or three words, see how you can combine
them to bring other words to mind.
o One book on creativity urged the thinker to use words as bait in a fishing
expedition for memories, ones that can be used as aids to creativity.
o Metaphor: A linkage between unrelated thoughts.
o Metaphoric thinking occurs much more often in soft focus.
o Similar states of emotion can be much more potent sources of poetic
metaphor than similar ideas.
o Try this out. Think of a time in which you experienced a very specific
emotion. Then write a poem about that emotion in a very different
context. Write a poem about two very different contexts with the same
emotional content.
o Perhaps a poem, or one line in a poem, is so well written, rendered so that
the exact emotion conveyed by the poet is experienced by the reader. This
is a successful poem.
o Read Wordsworths Tinturn Abbey, the affections gently lead us on.
o Read Keats. Study his use of emotion. Write poems based on the emotion
content only, not on Keats specifics.
o Emotions are far more resonant in soft focus. Use soft focus on one very
specific form of emotion. See what images come to mind, but not at your
bidding.
o When Im on my computer writing, Im by necessity too sharp-focused in
my thoughts. I have too strong a sense that Im supposed to be writing
something that is well thought out, hard-edged, sharp-focused, logical,
complete. I resist that discipline. I dont write as much as Id like because
this annoys me so much. Instead, I should get used to being here, on the
computer, plunging in with words that flow from the soft-focused brain.
The best form of gaming ever invented.
o Find good definitions of emotion in online dictionaries, both general and
medical in nature. Use them to generate ideas about the nature of
emotion.
o Find hundreds of synonyms of different emotions listed online and in my
own dictionary. Find as many synonyms as possible. Each one will be
slightly different, meaning different shades of emotions. Create a list.
Generate your own ideas; add them to the list. Go through the list and pull
out the most interesting, unusual emotions. Write poems about these.
o An emotion is a complex state: mind and body changes, breathing, focus,
thoughts, face, pulse, sphincter, tears, glands, excitement, perturbations,
tenseness, relaxed posture. Think about your body when studying an
emotion word.
o There are such things as aesthetic emotions. Viewing a painting. Listening
to music. Seeing color. Feeling texture. Eating food. Seeing shadows at
different times of the day. A bright sunny day as opposed to dark cloudy.
o Subtle emotions seem to emerge in a room, as you stand amid certain
people.
o Walking along a dirt road on the first warm sunny spring day with my light
jacket tied around my waist, wearing white blouse, bright white skirt with
flowers, going home at lunch time from school. Its an old, old memory
fragment. Use memory fragments to meditate by, to write by.
o Hunger for food, for adventure, for love, for a new book to buy, an aching
looking-forward to something or some event.
o A particular emotion that goes with one particular scene in memory. A
visual emotion, a sound emotion, an aroma emotion, taste, touch.
o Idiosyncratic emotions that grow right out of a certain personality
o That aghast feeling immediately after doing something and realizing it was
an embarrassment to you.
o There are no names for most of our very particular, personal, idiosyncratic
emotions, we merely experience them and dont try to describe them. This
is what poetry is for
o I experience that particular emotion with that particular memory. They
come in my mind in one package. Creativity permits the poet to repackage
that package in a new experience.
o Remember the sense of putting on the brand new striped light jacket, the
new clothes smell, the crispness, the thing of it all.
o Remember the toe-curling joy of realizing something intellectually that
makes sense of much that never made sense before. A kind of electric joy.
o Softening focus as I grow sleepy. Losing the ability to control my stream of
thoughts. Somehow managing to write them down. Barely noticing the
mistakes I make. No editing, not till much later.
o Seize the Moment
o Cease the Moment
o Note the profound difference
o Between having a soul and
o Perceiving an interior
o Observer watching
o Whats going on in the observers mind
o Being a soul
o A holistic sense
o In space and time
o Of Beingness
o Of Experiencing
o Of Space
o Of Time