Meditations for Writers

By Sally Morem

o Set yourself up for creative thoughts. When at the computer, do

something else that’s 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 Berlin’s 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 Wordsworth’s 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 I’m on my computer writing, I’m by necessity too sharp-focused in

my thoughts. I have too strong a sense that I’m supposed to be writing

something that is well thought out, hard-edged, sharp-focused, logical,

complete. I resist that discipline. I don’t write as much as I’d 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. It’s 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 don’t 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 What’s going on in the observer’s 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