Mediation Saves My Writing

Most of us know that dedicated writers can’t afford to wait for the muse to come knocking at their door. Time is too limited, and writing an entire book is a l-o-n-g process. So every day, or almost every day, the dedicated writer practices a well-proven technique called Butt in the Chair, while trying their best to ignore the overall quality of the crappy first draft. 

This means we writers sometimes have those days where we stare at the computer monitor for hours or type out horrible sentences with clunky metaphors or take four hours out of the day to write something awful while other real-life demands wait impatiently for attention, playing on our guilt. Yeah, those days suck.

I think I’ve found a way to call the muse, on my own schedule. It all began when I took a meditation class at my local Rec center. While I was supposed to Om-ing with a blank mind, my plot kept sticking its nose into my conscious with the perennially question: “What if…?” Let me tell you, when Plot shows up to offer ideas, it’s not smart to say, “Go away, I’m busy!” 

So yeah, meditation class, in the standard sense, was a failure for me. But when I got home, I decided to try it as a creative tool. The next time I felt unmotivated to write, or worse, was raring to go but didn’t have a clue what to write about, I dimmed the lights, took ten deep breaths while stilling my mind, then slowly moved into my imagination. For me, what works is to focus on the sensory details of the scene. Here’s how it went today with a scene I want to write that takes place in the Critical Care Unit of a hospital. I didn’t concern myself with plot in a logical fashion. Instead, I called up the imagery, uncensored and in random order. I heard the beeps of machines. I felt the thin blanket. I saw the wires going everywhere. I felt the pliable plastic IV bag. I felt the heaviness of the door and the sound of it clicking open and shut with a revolving door of nurses. I felt the flat pillow under my head. I heard the drone of the TV, always on as background noise. I felt the stiffening of the blood pressure band around my arm….

You get the idea. By the time I was done, I was in the scene and ready to go. Because I felt like I was there before I even began to write, the words, the descriptions, the details of the scene carried me though to what I believe is a much better first draft. Go ahead, try it! Then let me know how it works for you…