Notebook Thought 3

It is quite possible that we don't need to write, that we only need to breath, and by breathing, we are actually writing. Nearly every breath, observed with mindfulness, is covered in language.

Notebook Thought 2

As far as prewriting and existing in verbal emptiness go, sometimes it comes close to a state of sleep while at the desk, a thirty second shut down of the mind. I welcome this state for its egolessness, its openness to possibility. It's an elevator ride down to that best level of blankness. It's the bottom of the world underneath a sentence.

Notebook Thought 1

Who is the writer? Just as every writing teacher is a composite of all the teachers and experiences a student has had in the past, the writer is not a fixed identity but fluctuates based on his or her perceptions. The writer is whomever internal talk is providing in the moment. This is the basis for No-Self Writing.

Mindful Writing Workshop in New Hampshire

If you live in New Hampshire, USA, here's an opportunity in your area to check out these mindful writing techniques in person. I'll be offering this workshop through the New Hampshire Humanities Council:   https://www.nhhumanities.org/programs/present-moment-prolific-moment-using-mindfulness-write

I'll Be Your Reader [for writers living in New Hampshre]

If you are a current resident of New Hampshire, check out this opportunity at my other blog.

It's a form of mindful reading as I will be suspending evaluation, enjoying the pieces sent to me in the moment.

As state poet laureate, I'll be available to read one poem per week sent to me by a current NH resident. More info can be found at my blog: https://newhampshirepoetlaureate.blogspot.com/2019/12/ill-be-your-reader.html  

Link to my September 2019 TEDx Talk, "How Mindfulness Can Transform the Way You Write"

My TEDx Talk, "How Mindfulness Can Transform the Way You Write," is now available:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3yxnFac7CNA

Here's the description of the talk:

A few simple ways to observe the moment can make an immediate difference on how most of us feel about writing and how successful we are at it. Mindfulness gives us new writing tools, including internal talk, impermanence, and detachment. Every moment can become a prolific moment.

More Mindful Approaches to Freewriting

This semester, I've been giving new thought to strategies around freewriting.

In all of my writing courses, it doesn't matter if it's a 100-level, a 400-level, or a graduate course, I emphasize the importance of freewriting as a way to record, on page or screen, our internal rhetoric. This recording of internal talk is crucial in a few regards:

1. Freewriting emphasizes quantity over quality. This is super important because it suggests a more forgiving, self-accepting view of the self as a writer. Maximum quantity only happens if we invite everything in and don't pause to correct ourselves. 

Instead of fixing or editing, while freewriting writers develop a higher tolerance for their inevitable moments of dull or repetitive thinking. Writers operate out of faith that there's a natural abundance of other material in their ongoing inner production of language. Writers trust themselves more.


2. Freewriting allows writers to mindfully perceive the actual first language to appear on the scene: namely, that internal talk. This is important because it honors that first language by making it visible on the page or screen. 

In turn, this honoring means that writers are being more mindful of their present writing moment. Most importantly, writers are remaining aware that their future audience isn't in the room.

It also means that their intrapersonal rhetoric--how writers persuade themselves of certain views about their writing ability in general or their ability to complete the specific task at hand--becomes more visible. So writers become more aware of how they talk themselves into certain moods about writing and certain choices during the writing process (procrastinating, editing too early, etc.). They notice the self-persuasion on the screen. Still, I think there are even more mindful ways to practice freewriting:

I've been encouraging students to incorporate more of their on-the-spot momentary thinking in freewrites. This is in the spirit, again, of how the goal is not a polished, organized freewrite. The goal is to accurately reflect their internal talk.

1. So I want them to include their reactions to being asked to freewrite in the freewrite. I want them to include any feelings of frustration, boredom, excitement, curiosity, physical pain from handwriting, etc. Any emotional reaction is a candidate for inclusion.

I ask them to see how those emotional reactions to freewriting are in flux. They're subject to impermanence even during a three minute freewrite. 

2. I encourage them to incorporate descriptions of their in-breath and out-breath, in phrases, at the commencement of a freewrite, but also during the middle and end of a freewrite. Just as writers can steer their internal talk through freewrites, guiding it toward a particular topic (a concept or a structural issue in a draft, for instance), they can also steer freewrites to help them become more mindful, to remember to pay attention to their breathing.

3. Finally, any emphasis on quantity in itself needs to be mindfully monitored to make sure we're not engaging in a preconception or over-valuation of written production. It's helpful to seek quantity (so we can practice writing self-acceptance and develop ease), but we need to be careful we're not craving written product or that higher word count from a freewrite. To do so means we're engaging in false binary thinking (i.e.: writing is good / not writing is to be avoided) that's actually a craving that can lead to writing suffering. 

Image: https://search.creativecommons.org/photos/fd6b7add-5617-4195-b9ad-3b4d3350e8d3
Ms. Neaux Neaux, Licensed under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 2.0