How to Hold Off an Idea Until It's Ready

I’d compare holding off an idea to the moment just before the needle pierces the skin in a hospital ward. The recipient is tensed up for the critical impact while the hypo, clasped between the trained fingers of a nurse cuts the air as it makes its way for the disinfected spot. A unique tingle comes over that part of the body as it waits for cold steel, hungry for blood to break skin and introduce its fluid into the bloodstream.

There comes a time when you know you are going to create something: a poem, a song, a story or even a project as tasking as a novel. I’m talking about those times when the idea presents itself to the mind as an impossible-to-make-out image, a piece of incomplete thought and you can’t readily settle on how it’s going to turn out. Here’s what you can to do to prevent yourself from ruining a great idea and end up burnt out.

Keep a Notebook or Sheet of Paper

Scribble bits and pieces of thoughts and phrases which you think have a connection with the idea at hand. You never know which of these nuggets will spark a flame and maybe become the first line of your story/poem. Jot down entire lines and sentences, from your readings if they so much as inspire creative thinking. Sometimes, a snippet from a billboard ad could be the seedbed for your idea.

Keep an Open Mind

Vague as this tip sounds; it is a really important step in cleaning up your mind and ridding it of leftovers from past write-ups. You can actually choke on a good idea while trying to force the pattern of a previous creation on it. Allow the idea free rein for as long as is required for it to ripen.

Play With the Idea

Don’t start the actual writing, yet. But do write it in your mind. Try a free association of the most persistent phrases—those expressions that keep recurring in flashes and seem to be the handle of the overall idea. By doing this you keep from trying to force it and also, get a better grip of the frame of the entire composition, at the same time. Richard Wilbur waited fourteen years while jotting down phrases before he committed his pen to paper to write his poem, The Mind-Reader.

Talk to Yourself

Do it aloud or silently. Talk around the idea; talk about its vagueness, how it squirrels away just before you can wrap your fingers around its essence. Ponder what style of writing it could turn out to be; if it is something fresh and unique or if it’s your regular thing. Brood over the theme (if you’ve figured it out), go deep and feel the weight of the inspiration which presented the idea and try to make yourself at home within it.

Take Long Walks

Here’s one surefire weapon you can use to tackle the edginess that accompanies the waiting period. Shorten the wait with walks and talks, is a saying you ought to give a try. Go on long strolls, if you can find the time and place. Take that time to tinker with the idea, turning it this way and that while you search for the key that unlocks the door and sends you reeling into the heart of your next creation.

Let the Initial Emotion Cool Off

Above all, try not to write in the heat of emotion. You stand a chance of muddling up the waters and scaring away dinner. Your emotions can totally blind you and make everything you write look awesome. A few weeks or months after your so-called spectacular write-up then you reread the work you have so wonderfully created and Ouch! *Palm over face.*

            A good fisherman knows how to tease the fish; when to cast his net; when to reel in his catch; and especially, when to hold off from upsetting the net. Now go and do likewise.

This article is actually a product of waiting. The idea popped into my mind around the month of April while I was doing NaPoWriMo but I kept putting the moment of actual writing off; kept waiting for the idea to blossom and produce fruit. I can’t tell you the thrill wasn’t worth the wait. And that’s the reason I believe that waiting is a game to the trained mind. Waiting is a writer’s game.

Keep your pens bleeding!

Akpan

Is Writing Poetry Intuitive?

Poetry begins in the head. The day had gone gray and I’d pretty much given up on fetching new stuff to celebrate the occasion. I was just settling into the fact that all I was going to do that day was set up a customized blog header when the line, ‘I wish you knew the man I called father’ blew in on the breath of inspiration. Details of the poem, dedicated to the memory of my father who passed on some twenty odd years ago, sorted itself out with the introduction of the phrase above.

Writing a poem can be either exciting or pretty much like cutting rock with an ax. It all depends on the angle of approach. Wordsworth took his cue from this when he said poetry “takes its origin from emotions recollected in tranquility; the emotion is contemplated till, by a species of reaction, the tranquility gradually disappears, and an emotion kindred to that which was before the subject of contemplation, is gradually produced, and does itself actually exist in the mind. In this mood successful composition gradually begins.” Underneath every good poem a carpet of refined emotions sustains the poem’s resonance, molding and loading it with deep meaning heavier than the metaphors presenting them.

Wordsworth composed the entirety of his poem, “Tintern Abbey” about 159 lines in all, in his head while taking a rather long stroll. “Not a line of it was altered,” he said. “And not any part of it written down till I reached Bristol.” How a poem begins and takes form in the mind; how the poet recognizes it for what it is and starts rubbing words together to kindle the flame; trying for consistency says a lot about the role intuition plays in its creation. When a poet tries to force a poem it often than not produces a composition which, comes off raucous to the ears like the sound broken glass makes trampled under heavy boots.

Poetry works best when it comes as a result of a free association of words in the mind, when it springs from an idea and develops through emotion that has been refined in the heat of tranquility. When I wrote the poem about my father, I’d had years to mourn his passing—the emotions within had blossomed from pure grief and outright bitterness to one of clear perception. And when the muses whispered those lines to my heart, the tranquility had traded places for recollected emotion. I knew what I was writing about like I knew my own heart.

Magic plays a prominent role in the writing of a poem. It is impossible to create one without help from the muses. Ask anyone in the know and they will tell you that, “Poets who have written successfully have done so largely through intuition. Poets often do this without being able to explain how, just as readers may respond to such rhythms without knowing technically, why.” A quote from Robert Wallace’s ‘Writing Poems’ which still rings true to this very day.

Keep your pens bleeding.

Akpan

7 Myths About Random Writing

A lot of stuff has been said about random writing (or intuitive writing) and not a few borders on the process involved in the form. How is the style of writing done?; why do people use it or why should they?; who needs its seemingly rich resourcefulness?

If you have a desire to delve deeper into this form of writing check here and here. In this post, I'll limit myself to unraveling misconceptions folks have managed to build around the fine art of random writing.

1. Random Writing is Freewriting

Find out more about freewriting here. While a writer may on occasion, practice freewriting to pull himself out of a rut so he can get on with the actual writing project, folks who foray into random writing know what they're up against. This isn't about turning out the trash clogging the flow; it's about turning on the flow in spite of the trash. It is the project.

2. Random Writing is For Writers Who Are Blocked

Of course, it is a surefire cure for the block but legendary writers like Ray Bradbury for example, will tell you that 99.9% of the stuff they churn out is straight from their mind to paper. According to these accomplished writers, this is something you do everyday, every time you scribble. Besides keeping the block in check, plying this route will keep your juice fired up all day.

3. Random Writing is For Poets/Lyricists

Nope. And not just for writers of the short form of fiction, either. Writers like Stephen King have penned 1,000 page tomes by getting lost in their subconscious.

It comes through much practice.

4. Random Writing is Being Lazy

Yes indeed, if your goal is to write an instruction manual. Writers who affect writing randomly understand the physical and emotional involvement it requires. And while it might look like an excuse to fill up time in your study, writing in this fashion demands dredging deep into your psyche and calling out stuff that ain't.

 

5. Random Writing is Wishing For the Moon

Yes it is. But you are wishing because there is a guarantee you are going to get not just any moon but a full moon. Probably, if you have not been doing a whole lot of writing in and out of the zone, it becomes impossible to grasp this level of creativity. And that's why, this is especially true if you're new to this trade, you MUST write everyday. You're training yourself to sync with your deeper self at a snap because that's where the good stuff are.

6. Random Writing is Premeditated Writing

You have to read a lot so you can write a lot. Remember, GIGO? But with random writing, you don't have to study an instruction manual, memorize some vital points before you spill your guts on the page. That ain't writing intuitively which is putting your pen to paper and letting your thoughts, untainted by needless edits, flow directly to the page.

7. Random Writing is Always a PeRfect JOB

If that means you never have to revise your work then you're wrong. Bypassing your mind helps you to contact the real self and leads to honing your writing style. With intuitive writing, you are creating the real stuff. Keep this at the back of your mind at all times. “Much of the stuff you create will be bilge but the rest... it will save your life.”

Random writing or intuitive writing is the purest approach to creating words because it translates your thoughts in its purest form to the page, totally shutting out interference from your mind. No wonder the great writer, Ray Bradbury sketched it with these two words, “DON'T THINK.”

You should try it sometime, you'll never write any other way if you do. I guarantee it.

Keep your pens bleeding.

Akpan

The Discipline of Feeling (Intuitive Writing)

When was the first time you heard the phrase intuitive writing?

I probably, heard it coined this way from the late legendary writer Ray Bradbury.  Notice I said coined this way because I think Robert Wallace was towing the same line when he wrote up the phrase ‘random writing’ in his book ‘Writing Poems.’

The best way a writer achieves or perfects writing intuitively is through the discipline of his emotions or feeling. This is the state of inventiveness Bradbury refers to as writing from the heart or writing with little or no interference from the mental faculty. This level of creativeness involves transferring raw emotions directly to the page thereby, turning intangible material into meaningful coordinated form of writing.

So, how exactly do you go about this seemingly complicated method of flow? I'm a little bit in the know with stuff like this. I got my gears well oiled from years of practice long before I came across the twin phrases listed above. I tried it with lyrics then poetry. I'll have some tune dropped in my heart and I'll just go with the muse and set the sound to words. I bet a lot of folks reading this didn't know that sort of thing falls under intuitive writing. But it does.

Writing in this way doesn't come easy sometimes; you just have to take the plunge-nothing on your mind, not even the faintest idea where the whole shebang would come out or what exactly it is you are dribbling about. I wrote a lot of poetry straddling that line.

Stephen King calls it writing without an outline, going with the flow, or listening to the muse. And you can master it by consistently striving to dredge up words from that bottomless void-that incitive convolution of nameless emotions inside you. If you look into the deep long enough, you go deep. And that's a given.

Practice. Practice. Practice. Until it becomes a bad habit that hangs around even when you're totally unaware of it.

Scribble one word on paper, any word, then string it up with another then another until it creates a meaning. Is that a picture in your mind? Recreate it on paper with words. If you see this in the realm of the impossible maybe, it's cause you're trying to see the finished product before you start. That's not writing intuitively, at all.

The magic of intuitive writing lies in falling and getting right back up only to start all over again even though, you are aware you might bust your nose walking into a wall the next minute. It is the expectant certainty that eventually, you're going to be alright.

Keep your pens bleeding!

Akpan