How do you write from your centre?
A coaching client recently posed this question to me. As a shakuhachi player, he is familiar with the concept of playing from the hara, from his abdomen. Power is generated from the hara and focused through the lips to generate sound. Is there a way to do something similar with writing?
That question became the basis of this essay.
Writing As a Physical Act
Much discussion on writing out there focuses on the technical, artistic and commercial side of writing. Secrets of the craft, indie vs traditional publishing, which software to use, these discussions and more are no doubt important to a writer. Yet by immersing yourself in such discussions, it is easy to overlook a simple truth:
Writing is a physical act.
Writing isn’t normally associated with physical labour. After all, you’re just sitting at a table and pounding away at a keyboard. Or you’re writing with pen and paper. Or speaking into a microphone. The writer stays locked in place for hours on end, so much so that he has to be reminded to move to stave off the health impact of too much sitting.
And yet, stories do not come out of nowhere. The author does not simply will a story into existence out of thin air. The story must be written. This act of writing bridges the divide between the inner and the outer world, the world of thought and the world of matter. Through the act of writing, the author brings forth his thoughts, emotions, ideas, perspectives, sharing it with the world.
The act of writing is intimately connected with the writer’s mental state. It is the outer manifestation of his inner state. By establishing unity with mind and body, the writer discovers his full potential—and beyond.
The Chinese internal martial arts prioritises developing this unity. Static breathing exercises enable the practitioner to develop calmness and celerity of thought. When moving, the practitioner first generates the intention to move, then moves in accordance with intention. Through countless reps, he reduces, even eliminates, the gap between intention and movement. His body moves exactly where he wants to go. At the highest level, there isn’t even any conscious thought. He simply wills for something to happen—and his body makes it so.
In the field of psychology, the flow state is described as a state of total immersion in an activity. The actor is completely absorbed in the moment, the dancer becoming the dance. Such a state is elusive and fleeting. It demands balancing a high level of technical skill with a high level of challenge, requiring total yet effortless concentration, uniting action and consciousness into a seamless whole. It is the state where intuition and knowledge meld together to create something transcendent.
The ideal meditative state is one of total presence and complete emptiness. The meditator is fully engaged in the moment, totally aware of his inner and outer state. At the same time, he is utterly still, inside and out, his heart quiet, his mind free from extraneous thoughts. It is a sacred silence, brimming with infinite potential. It is so fragile, it can be shattered with a single errant thought. Yet it is so enduring, the skilled meditator can bring this state of mind with him wherever he goes, in whatever he does.
Through the recognition of writing as a physical act, as a bridge between the inner and outer worlds, we acknowledge and establish the unity of mind and body. Through uniting the mind and body, we attain the flow state with effortless ease, and perform at a high level. To establish this unity, we seek the sacred stillness found in a meditative state, and bring it out to everything we do. As it is with writing, music, meditation and martial arts, so it is with all things.
Creating Effortlessness
Attaining mind-body unity is an ambitious endeavour. You want to make it effortless. You don’t want to be distracted by things that pull your attention away from your work. The first step, therefore, is to create the conditions for effortless action.
Draw your attention to your posture. Is your spine erect? Is your screen at eye level? Is there tension or pains or misalignments in your body? A crooked posture gives rise to crooked thoughts, tense thoughts come from a tense torso. Creating high art is difficult when your body is constantly sending pain and alarm signals.
Establish and maintain proper writing posture. Arrange your work environment for optimum ergonomics, as best as you can. Remove every distracting and useless item in your vicinity. Address health issues, as appropriate. The goal is to set your body at ease, so that your heart and mind are also at ease.
Determine your ideal method of writing. Some people do better with pen and paper. Others prefer a typewriter or a computer. Still others may prefer dictation. Whichever method you prefer, pick the method that feels natural to you.
This is especially important for writers with medical issues like carpal tunnel syndrome. It will be difficult to sustain your writing if you cannot physically type. Dictation software allows the writer to maintain his output without compromising his health.
Once you have determined your best method of writing, master it. For pen and paper writers, this may mean learning penmanship that allows you write quickly yet legibly. Typists should learn how to type as fast as they can without wearing out their joints. Dictation writers need to train their software to recognise their voices and key terms.
You know you have reached mastery when you no longer have to think about how to carry out the physical act of writing. You just write. You reach the state where there is no ‘you’. There is the pen gliding across the paper, there are fingers tapping on keys, there is a voice speaking into a microphone, but there is no conscious thought or effort required in the process, no need for constant corrections or edits.
This requires practice. Long, hard hours of practice. You have to put in the work to attain mastery of your medium, in addition to mastery of the craft of writing. There is no shortcut here. Through intense, focused, dedicated practice, you discover what works best for you, and pare away everything that does not, until all that is left is simply everything that works—and no more.
It is like sculpting. The sculptor begins with a block of material. Then he steadily removes material until all that is left is the work of art, and nothing more. Through removal, he frees the image and gives it life and meaning. But he needs to develop skill and certainty while chipping away at the block, while still holding on to his inner vision.
The Immovable Mind
A mind that is caught by something stops at that thing, and so it is called a vacillating mind. A mind that is not caught by anything is free to move anywhere, and so it is called an immovable mind.
This is the paradox presented by Takuan Soho in his writings The Unfettered Mind.
A mind that can be pushed and pulled about lacks focus. The reason it is pushed and pulled about is because it is caught by something. The reason it is caught is because it stops on that thing. By stopping on that thing, it becomes fixated on it. Being fixated on it, it cannot perceive anything beyond it.
A mind that does not stop on anything cannot be caught by anything. It perceives everything at once. Perceiving everything at once, it sees in an instant what must be done.
Takuan writes:
When facing a single tree, if you look at a single one of its red leaves, you will not see all the others. When the eye is not set on any one leaf, and you face the tree with nothing at all in mind, any number of leaves are visible to t he eye without limit. But if a single holds the eye, it will be as if the remaining leaves were not there.
Meditation is associated with having an empty mind. That is one type of meditation, and rather difficult for beginners to pull off. Another method is simply to observe the stream of thoughts flowing through the mind without being distracted by it. You are aware of these thoughts, but you do not hold on to them. You do not feed them. You simply allow them to pass. It is little different from the ordinary state of being, in which thoughts rise and fall and pass away; here, you are simply conscious of the process.
In the context of writing, having an immovable mind is to do everything that helps you complete the work, and to not do anything that does not. It means recognizing impulses and distracting thoughts as they arise, and letting them go. It is to see what needs to be done to achieve your writing goals, and to focus on that—and only that—until it is done.
Suppose that you only have two hours to write. As you write, distracting thoughts appear. You need to check your email, you want to do the laundry, you feel like doing anything and everything that is not writing.
Recognise these thoughts as they come. Allow them to leave. Do not act on them. This frees your mind to focus on what is important: the writing.
The way to do this is to hold a specific intention in mind: to write. This is not steadfast determination that you must put in effort and do something, or a desire that something will or will not be done. You are not forcing yourself to do something or to not do something. There is no effort involved here. It is simply a slight preference that the writing will be done.
This intention, this preference, guides your action. When a thought arises, filter it through this preference. That which helps you complete your writing should be done; that which does not should be ignored.
Writing is a physical act. But as important as the act of writing is to completing the story, so too is not doing anything that does not lead to completion. Maintaining an immovable mind—as opposed to a fixed mind—frees your mind to focus completely on the work.
And when that happens, you may just discover depths of talent you never knew you had.
Intention Like A Diamond
Writing is communication. The secret to clear communication is clarity of intent. When your intention is clear, your thoughts are clear, and when your thoughts are clear, everything you communicate is clear. Conversely, when your intention is muddled, your thoughts are muddled, and so your communication is muddled.
Before you commit one word to paper, you must be clear about what you want to write. The themes, the structure, the characters, the mood, the plot, the chapters. You must have clear vision of the story at both the macro and the micro perspective.
Outlining is an important tool. It allows you to visualise the story at the macro and micro level, to determine points of focus and weakness, and to make adjustments as needed. The outline shows you how the story starts, where it will go, and how it will end. A strong outline is an outline that crystallizes your vision of the story. Should you lose your way, the outline brings you back in line with the crystal-clear intention you had for the story.
Pantsers and discovery writers don’t enjoy creating formal outlines. They tend to be spontaneous souls, and planning feels unnatural to them. Not only that, the process consumes creative energies that could go into the work. There are many successful writers out there who simply refuse to outline.
The purpose of outlining is to create a document that keeps you aligned with your vision. The outline is not always necessary. What is necessary is developing and maintaining clear vision throughout the length of the work. Writers who shudder at the thought of outlining should cultivate the ability to craft, maintain and recall a clear vision of their work throughout the writing process. The very act of discovery writing could well be thought of as an attempt to discover and create that clear vision.
My personal preference is to write a first draft that is as clean as possible. That means creating a detailed outline, and referring to it as needed. Other writers may prefer to write multiple drafts with minimal planning, with each draft taking them closer and closer to their vision of the story. Whatever you preference, vision is paramount.
Develop vision like a diamond. It is clear, sparkling and brilliant. You know exactly what you want to write and how to write. It is hard, sharp, unbreakable. You know this story is what you need to write and nothing can stop you. At the same time, it can also be cut and polished. You are willing to make edits and alterations so that you can bring out the full glory of your story. And should you discover that your story strays from your vision, make ruthless cuts to eliminate everything that is not aligned to your goals.
Some writers use an outline. Others prefer to discover the story as they go along. Whichever their preference, when it is time to put pen to paper, the writer must have a clear intent. An intention like a diamond, clear and hard and brilliant, will carry the writer from start to finish. Without intent, without vision, without clarity, the story is lost before the start.
Writing from your Centre
Here, at last, we put everything together.
You have created the conditions for effortless work. You have cultivated an immovable mind, free from distraction. You have established an intention clear and hard and brilliant as a diamond. Now it is time to write.
Treat writing as a whole-body movement. It should not be isolated. Let the act of writing originate from the belly and extend outwards to the extremities.
When you speak, speak from your belly, project your voice, and move your arms and body naturally to express the words and the intention behind the words. The intention to speak arises in the mind, the air and energy of your words gather in your belly, your throat and lips give it shape air into words, and your body language reinforce your words to communicate your intent.
In this same manner, when you write, let your whole body do the writing, moving as a single unit. Do not restrict your movements to your fingers and wrists, and lock down the rest of your body. Rather, imagine this movements originating from the centre and flowing down your extremities. Free your torso, joints and limbs to move with ease and grace, maximising efficiency and comfort. Discover the most efficient, ergonomic, most tension-free method of performing the movements of writing, and maintain it. When you no longer have to think about writing, when there is no tension or resistance hindering you, you know you are on the right track.
Although your body is engaged in writing, your mind is free to take in everything. Guided by your intention, your mind forms the thoughts that guide your body to manifest words, phrases, sentences, paragraphs. A mind that is free to go anywhere, without getting caught on anything, is an immovable mind free from distraction, capable of discovering the best way to communicate your ideas.
When it is time to write scenes with significant emotional impact, consider the physical sensations of those emotions. How does it feel to be pensive, frightened, determined, happy? What physiological and psychological sensations emerge from these states? Does your belly tighten, your chest open, your hands clench, your head lift? What emotions and sensation arise from these physical actions? Seek to reproduce this emotional state in your own work.
Here is an example: How do you write softly? First discover what ‘soft’ means to you. How does your body feel when you do something softly? What sensations do you pick up in your belly, your arms, your legs, and everywhere else? What emotions or memories do you associate with softness? Pay attention to your inner state as you explore these ideas. Then, when you write, reproduce those same sensations within you, and allow those sensations to flow from your inner world and out into the page.
In the case of my client, I asked him to recall how it felt to play low, soft notes on the shakuhachi. Then he should take this sense-memory and reproduce it while he writes. He should write with that same sensation of softness, and in so doing, infuse his work with softness.
This infuses your work with, for want of a better word, energy. By generating and channelling the emotional-physical-psychological energy of a moment in your body as you write, you can induce a similar state in the reader when he reads your work.
To do this effectively, however, you must also allow these energies to pass through you, without hanging on to them. A writer’s job involves eliciting the whole range of human emotions: joy, sorrow, rage, fear, disgust, warmth, horror, and so on. These emotions are only suitable in the moment of writing, to suit the emotional tone of the scene. When that moment is gone, that emotion is no longer needed. Holding on to that emotion could lead to chronic illnesses in the long term. Thus it is important to cultivate an immovable mind, a mind that does not get caught by strong emotions, a mind that releases emotion when the moment is past.
Writing As A High Art
Writing is a deceptively simple act.
Everybody writes something every day. It is easy to do it mindlessly, without considering the deeper mind-body-spirit connection. I hold that the secret to writing as a high art is to establish and utilise unity of mind and body.
Writing is mental. It is emotional. It is physical. It is all of the above. It is the act of manifesting abstract thoughts in the concrete world. By engaging with writing on these levels, you can remove distractions and obstacles, optimise your writing process, and maintain focus. Through consciously working with your core, allowing your words to emerge from the centre of your being and flow out onto the page, you yourself can attain and maintain a state of flow.
This practice cannot be described entirely in words alone. Words are the domain of the left brain, and this practice demands the whole brain, united with the body. There is much here that defies the power of language to capture.
Should you wish to discover this high art, you must do it yourself. Set aside all preconceptions, release all expectations and desires, and write. And as you write, observe and adjust.
And then… you might just discover things that you never knew.
All my best works were written using this method. Check out my latest project here and see for yourself.
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