Where there was nothing, there will be something that has come from within you. It’s not only Nature that abhors a vacuum fear of empty space affects everyone in every creative situation. You’re not alone anymore your goal, your idea, is your companion. Get engaged with that idea, play with it, push it around-you’ve acquired a goal to underpin this solitary activity. You’re seeking thoughts from the unconscious, and trying to tease them forward until you can latch onto them. You are not trying to empty your mind, not trying to sit restfully without conscious thoughts. Note that this activity is the exact opposite of meditation. The Gaelic phrase for this state of mind is “quietness without loneliness.” If it doesn’t, extend the exercise to eleven minutes, then twelve, then thirteen…until you find the length of time you need to ensure that something interesting will come to mind. Then start paying attention to your thoughts to see if a word or goal materializes. (Anyone can handle one minute of daydreaming.) Work up to ten minutes a day of this mindless mental wandering. Sit alone in a room and let your thoughts go wherever they will.
To build up your tolerance for solitude, you need a goal. You’re alone, you’re suffering, and you don’t have a good reason for putting yourself through that misery.
It’s all that solitude without a purpose. It’s not the solitude that slays a creative person. The thought of going into a room to work all by themselves pains them in a way that is, at first, paralyzing within the room, and then keeps them from entering the room altogether. Pick your “pencil” and don’t leave home without it. Before he knows it, he has the ingredients for a full-fledged story.Ĭartoonists who always carry pen and pad to sketch what they see, photographers who always have a camera in their pockets, composers who carry Dictaphones to capture a snatch of vagabond melody that pops into their heads. Sometimes, if he’s lucky, the writer attaches a complete biography to the face, and then a name, and then a narrative.
Not only does the exercise warm up his descriptive powers, but studying the crags, lines, and bumps of a stranger’s face forces him to imagine that individual’s life. When he has a moment, he writes it all down in his notebook. What is your pencil? What is the one tool that feeds your creativity and is so essential that without it you feel naked and unprepared?Ī writer never leaves his apartment without reminding himself to “come back with a face.” Whether he’s walking down the street or sitting on a park bench or riding the subway or standing on a checkout line, he looks for a compelling face and works up a rich description of it in his mind.
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