Lately, I’ve been reading books that I’d categorize subject matter-wise as “thinking about thinking.”
Sort of meta, but important...you know?
I found myself nodding along to a particular section of Ryan Holiday’s Ego is the Enemy recently as it discussed something specifically relevant to writing: The fact that so often, ideas get stuck in writers’ heads (and never make it to the page.)
Holiday references a quote from Plato that calls this activity “feasting on one’s own thoughts.”
We all do this two main ways:
1. We think about the moment/feeling/experience of accomplishing something big.
Some call this manifesting, which is the idea that by cultivating an experience of a specific outcome in your mind, you can somehow nudge it into being/happening.
We think past the part where all the hard work happens that gets us to that pinnacle of success and fast forward to revel in the good feelings of “I did it! I made it!”
For writers, this can include things like *finally* publishing that novel, having a blog post or an article go viral, selling X copies of a book, making a bestseller list, getting a blurb from a writer you admire, etc. We get excited about those positive feelings of success (because they feel good, duh!)
But the danger of this is: We may get too wrapped up in the stories we tell ourselves around these visions of life post-success and never get around to actually doing the hard, step-by-step work required to get us to that point.
Creative writers with big imaginations can especially struggle with this, as their ideas and stories of success around them are apt to propagate and build until it feels better to think about writing rather than to do the writing.
Anne Lamott says it well in her book Bird by Bird:
“If you aren’t careful...out of the right speaker in your ear will come the endless stream of self-aggrandizement, the recitation of one’s specialness, of how much more open and gifted and brilliant and knowing and misunderstood and humble one is.”
However, visualization can also go the other direction.
2. We think about all of the obstacles, challenges, and reasons we can’t accomplish something big.
The other reason writing doesn’t happen and ideas don’t make it from inside our brains to the page is that we get in our own way with thoughts and paralyzing obsessions around how our idea sucks, we’re not good enough writers, no one wants to read it anyway, etc.
Lamott’s quote continues here:
“Out of the left speaker will be the rap songs of self-loathing, the lists of all the things one doesn’t do well, of all the mistakes one has made today and over an entire lifetime, the doubt, the assertion that everything one touches turns to sh*t, that one is in every way a fraud, that one has no talent or insight, and on and on.”
So what can we, as writers, do to overcome this trap?
Understand fiction vs. reality.
Resist the temptation to “feast on your thoughts.”
They’re ultimately fiction, and they’ll get in the way of reality (which is where you’ll be doing your work.) Every time a thought comes up, positive or negative, ask yourself: Is this helping me move forward with the writing...or is it getting in the way?
“You must practice seeing yourself with a little distance, cultivating the ability to get out of your own head. Detachment is a sort of natural ego antidote. It’s easy to be emotionally invested and infatuated with your own work. What is rare is not raw talent, skill, or even confidence, but humility, diligence, and self-awareness.”― Ryan Holiday
Do. The. Work.
Your energy, attention, and time are limited resources--so don’t waste them spinning up unhelpful narratives in your head. This is time lost to the ego. Instead, sit down and do the work.
Even if it means writing just one new sentence every day. Spend less time thinking about the writing process itself (and everything that follows) and spend more time doing the actual writing.
“Ego is the enemy of what you want and of what you have: Of mastering a craft. Of real creative insight. Of repeating and retaining your success. It repulses advantages and opportunities; It’s a magnet for enemies and errors.” ― Ryan Holiday
If you need more practical tactics for writing when you feel stuck in your thoughts, I've shared some additional strategies here.
The bottom line: Get out of your head + get onto the page.
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