Meditation and the Writing

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Life’s frustrations and issues are the biggest creativeblocks for me. I normally only write in the evening during the week, and by thetime I get home from the office—my brain is filled with blockage. The angryclient, the bizarre phone call, the search for the perfect babysitter are justexamples of the things that lodge themselves within the tunnel that allows theideas to flow to my keyboard. 

Many famous writers such as James Joyce, Edgar Allen Poe,and Ernest Hemingway are known for self-medicating with alcohol or othersubstances to help lubricate that flow of ideas. For many it is a way to shutoff the mundane chatter that goes on inside the head to allow the characters tobe heard.

“Do you drink?"
"Of course, I just said I was a writer.”
― Stephen King

“Write drunk; edit sober.”

-Ernest Hemingway

Though I am notaverse to drinking a glass of wine or two to shush out the day, I find that thebest way is to sit in a quiet place for ten minutes or so and just meditate.Meditation allows us to find those thoughts that are hiding beneath the pile ofproblems, excuses, and random brain chatter. Meditation can be much better thanalcohol for writing and for life in general due to the fact that meditation haszero calories, no side-effects, lack of a hangover, and it’s free. In fact,meditation is actually very good for your health and your spirituality.

Meditation is not a way of making your mind quiet.

It’s a way of entering into the quiet that’salready there –

buried under the 50,000 thoughts 

the average personthinks every day.

– Deepak Chopra

If you arehaving trouble accessing your creativity, give yourself a ten minute break inthe silence or with soothing music, focus on your breath, dismissing all theother thoughts that are stifling your prose. Let your body relax, soothe yournerves, and calm your thoughts. When you find yourself alone with your breath,then just listen. The characters are there waiting to tell their story. Yourjob is just to write it down.