Sometimes my brain feels like a tabula rasa, ye olde blank slate. It's comparable to when a computer's hard drive has been scrubbed, wiped clean of any data. Or like an Etch-a-Sketch that has been turned over and had everything magically erased.
That means there is nothing inside my head except the default operating system--which ensures I can continue breathing, and functioning at the cellular level, fortunately. Those activities, as essential as they are, don't require any creative ability, so my brain pretty much delegates those to its hard-working minions.
You would think this particular state of mind would make it easier to come up with new ideas, since it's clean and clear inside the noggin, with none of the usual clutter and chatter. It's pristine and silent, the perfect conditions for hordes of creative invaders to overtake it.
Only it doesn't work that way for me.
When I'm in "blank brain" mode, my brain acts more like a nonstick surface, and ideas, if they appear, slide right off and disappear. It's almost as if my brain has been wiped down with an anti-cling cloth, so ideas just zip right through, feeling completely unwelcome. If a creative urge does try to stick, my brain is one half of a Velcro strip – the half that is all smooth and can't grab hold of anything even if it wanted to.
This used to worry me. I'd fret and wring my hands, convinced I had written the last words I'd ever write. I knew for a certainty my writing days were over. It took a long time, and an unnecessary amount of angst, to understand just how valuable this stage of the writing process can be.
It is actually a sabbatical for my brain, a chance for it to rest and recalibrate, so it doesn't burn out and lose its enthusiasm for wordplay.
During this phase, it's a good time to read something in a different genre than I usually choose, to startle my brain with something intriguing and challenging. I scribble in notebooks, collecting these musings and turning them into blog posts. One of my favorite things to do is hang out with books, in libraries and bookstores, since my mind considers these "family visits".
This is also a good time to take yourself out on a play date (see Butt Outta Chair), essentially filling your brain up with other sensory experiences, which helps the creativity thermometer gradually rise back to normal levels.
Just as my writing production has an ebb and flow (some days I spend 14 hours on a project, so it's to be expected that another day I might spend 1, or 4), I think my brain's creative abilities have a certain rise and fall too. When it has nothing to give, I try not to take. I don't want to end up in a deficit mode with my brain's creative output, so that it decides to stay blank forever.
When I give my brain this chance for a well-deserved R&R, it comes back so refreshed and raring to get back into the writing arena, it's almost hard to keep up. It's excited to show me what it's brought back from its inward travels, and the resulting creativity is always—always—more spectacular than I could have anticipated.
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