How to Notice Your Preconceptions about Writing

Preconceptions are gambles we take on the next writing moment. Preconceptions can cause major problems for writers, whether they're preconceptions about the immediate writing task at hand or about our long-term writing ability. In the previous post, we talked about genre as a common preconception of writers, for example.

To manage the impact of preconceptions on our writing, we'd first need to be able to see them. Preconceptions are tricky and elusive, however; they frequently pass through our mind without our noticing. Lacking a systematic investigation of self-ethos (or the way the self represents itself and its abilities to itself), we are usually at the mercy of this invisible agent. So how do we spot writing preconception?

One method is to try a quick, informal intrapersonal rhetorical analysis. In schools, writing instructors frequently assign interpersonal rhetorical analysis assignments (examining the rhetorical moves of another writer), but we don't typically look at how writers' self-talk is a form of persuasion. 

We don't need to write a full-blown analysis essay: a quick freewrite or momentwrite prior to starting our writing day should do the trick.

In the freewrite or momentwrite, ask yourself these questions: 

* Right now, what are you persuading yourself to do or think about your writing?

* How are you talking to yourself about your writing? What tone are you adopting?

* What sorts of emotional appeals (could fall on a range of positive/support to negative/critical) are you using on yourself about your writing? Are their word choices or images, for instance, designed to make you feel a certain way?

* What are you assuming about your ability to complete the writing task or about the outcome of this project?

Remember that your answers could be task-specific to the piece you're working on today or they could be about your overall, long-term ability and prospects as a writer (or a combination of both).

Freewrite or momentwrite for 5-10 minutes. Afterwards, take a look at what you've written, searching for ways you speak to yourself about writing. Don't judge yourself for hosting those thoughts. Simply make them visible--this will lessen their behind-the-scenes impact.

Does a Breath Have a Genre?

The next time you're at your desk thinking you should work on such-and-such piece, ask yourself, Does my next breath come with a genre? Does it come packaged with the label of Short Story or Screenplay or Sonnet? 

Writers should practice not knowing which genre they're about to write. 

Not knowing genre joins other important forms of not-knowing for mindful writing: not knowing the point of re-entry in a draft (but knowing already which piece one wants to work on); not knowing which piece one will work on (but knowing the genre of that piece); and not knowing if one will actually produce any words at all during a writing session. These types of not-knowing are needed to engage verbal emptiness--the space/time in which formless turns over to form and vice versa. At the most basic level, these forms of not-knowing are also necessary to remaining perceptive of the present while writing.

Notice that I say practice not predicting genre. Don't get me wrong: maintaining a focus is important. We need to narrow our intrapersonal to finish pieces. With a mindful writing practice, however, we allow ourselves numerous opportunities for the opposite of narrowing: a radical openness to the moment.

What we're trying to do is maximize possibility and reduce preconceptions, especially what Ellen Langer called premature cognitive commitments. In Mindfulness, Langer writes about how "mindlessness, as it diminishes our self-image, narrows our choices, and weds us to single-minded attitudes, has a lot to do with this wasted potential."

To increase our creative variables and contexts, it's preferable that we approach each present writing moment with mental windshield wipers that clear away all. Then we listen for whatever intrapersonal bits and phrases arise in that moment. By setting up a mind clear of assumptions, we are likely to hear a greater range of the intrapersonal in that call and response between our writing selves and the next moment. To remain longer in that state of openness, we try to not label this new intrapersonal material by genre (on top of trying of course not to evaluate or critique it).

Without present awareness, genre is a major form of preconception and nonproductive mindlessness.

Picking genre too early forecloses on possibility by exponentially and very quickly reducing structural and content options. Preconceptions freight the writing moment with faulty assumptions and limiting self-talk. Second only to the preconceptions about our writing ability that most of us tell ourselves while writing is our preconception about our genre.

During invention, there's no real need for 100% commitment then & there to the contexts & people affiliated with certain genre. Those people are not physically present while you write. Those contexts are not your context while you write. Our #1 allegiance during invention should be to observing the ever-changing present moment.

This is especially true of professional writers and students in school for creative writing. Graduate writing programs usually ask graduate students to declare their genre and sometimes undergraduate programs do as well. Genre for writers is a like a pearl: grit of past experience (a writing class taken in college, a passing compliment, a book read as a teenager) accumulated layers and layers of actions to make us "a poet" or "a novelist," and so forth. Actually, a series of moments accumulated and hardened into what now seems timeless, just how it is, the personal status quo.

Image from mispaintedadventures.wikia.com

Sutra on Preconception

THE SUTRA ON PRECONCEPTION  

            Thus I have heard. At one time, the Writer appeared in the hallway outside the administrative offices at the University of MFA Program, and a great many disciples were miraculously assembled, having paid conference and retreat fees and taken time off from work. The Writer knowing of the mental agitations going on in the minds of those assembled (like the surface of the ocean stirred into waves by the passing winds), and his great heart moved by compassion, smiled and said, We have spoken about the prolonging of invention, and now we must speak about the prolonging of emptiness. We have discussed the prolonging invention, but before invention comes emptiness.

Experience arises from emptiness,

and emptiness arises from experience (Suzuki).

From whence does language arise? Because language arises, because it is not always present, because it changes from word to word, there is something else, something always present, and that something is emptiness. Just as there are gaps between typed words, so too is there a gap between the moment before writing and the moment of writing.

            All writing is thus preverbal. All writing is built on emptiness, and emptiness is preverbal. We say “preverbal” and not “nonverbal” because the presumption is that language will rush in, that intrapersonal talk is definite, that it is only a matter of time (a few moments) before the blankness ends and fills with the conversation of our consciousness. But emptiness is also nonverbal in that it is freedom from all obligation, all mental formulations, all perception, including the obligation to write, including mental formulations about the act of writing, including perceived images and words that create the content of writing.

            There are different kinds of unknowing, oh bhikku, but they must be differentiated from mindless unknowing which is a blank or erasure that replaces the present moment versus the other kinds of unknowing that we discuss, for they are the contents of the present moment mindfully perceived. Mindlessness is a kind of pollution on pure mind. 
             There is the unknowing of unfamiliarity, the disorientation that makes the routine suddenly remarkable, that lets us perceive the uniqueness of that which we have thought of as a copy or repetition. This unfamiliarity is usually on the small scale: not recognizing a word, a word of routine suddenly looks strange, its spelling odd. 
             There is the unknowing of the fragmentary, that which occurs between the floes in our internal voice. Not knowing where one’s mind will next jump, the coming up of ideas entails leaping over wide expanses of unknowing. 
              There is the unknowing of the duration or how long it will take to complete a writing project, not knowing whether it can be completed in a few days or weeks or will take years or decades before the writer has a complete picture of the idea. 
               There is the unknowing of the unconscious, that which will take wide swipes at one’s awareness, the erasure of what has been only a moment before provided by the present, the abduction of a new thought greeted only seconds before it is pulled like a seal by a killer whale into the cold depths of unknowing. The unknowing of the unconscious pulls too at the writer, making her drowsy, making the writer nap, those siren calls to join it in a deep white sleep. 
               Preconception is a form of false knowing. It is an overstocking of the present moment with contents not found in the present moment. Preconceptions are the Ego’s attempt to control the vastness of the possible moment. They are false starts on the moment. They are a gamble on the moment: rather than reside in the non-verbal to consult the possible, we prefer to fill the moment with guesses. We replace possibility with a smaller, shorter, diminished content. We shackle ourselves to a premature commitment. Because of impermanence, the ever-shifting moment offers more manifold possibilities than a seemingly static preconception. We substitute one type of unknowing, that of emptiness, with another type of unknowing, that of preconception, a far lesser grade, oh bhikkuni. 
             For what can be known outside of the present moment, oh disciples? For what action occurs outside of the present? Even the action of knowing occurs in the present moment.
             There are preconceptions of alphabet, there are preconceptions of syntax and grammar, of vocabulary as well as how to hold a pen or pencil, form letters or type. A notion about how many pages or word count would make a successful writing session is a preconception. Preconceptions of the content you think you should or will write, preconceptions of the amount you should or will write, preconceptions about the genre you should or will write. Preconception too is the notion that to write is a positive thing as well as to write nothing is a negative phenomena. Preconception of how long it will take to complete a text, preconception that a text will ever advance or be finished or even read by others. You can not know in advance how long you will sit under the gnarled tree. Preconceptions of structure, organization. Preconception of what is mindfulness and what is mindlessness. Preconceptions of skill, knowledge, and training. Preconception of how many pages you will write today or the next day. There are preconception of process, of where one is in the writing process, ones that lead to misperception of one’s actual actions in the moment (See Keith Hjortshoj).

            Practice approaching one’s writing with a blank mind, free of preconception. Gradually decide which pre-existent abilities, content, or approaches can be returned to the mind. When you study Buddhism, you should have a general house cleaning of your mind. You must take everything out of your room and clean it thoroughly. If it is necessary, you may bring everything back in again. You may want many things, so one by one you can bring them back. But if they are not necessary, there is no need to keep them (Suzuki). Reel back in your literacy, your ability to write in the language, to follow grammatical rules. You may find you want to return a certain character or approach to voice or way of engaging in the writing process. Bring them back into the moment of your writing but do so mindfully, with awareness of their presence and impact.

*Material borrowed from Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, as well as Goddard's The Buddhist Bible.