The Writing Guru: Response to thoughts
Writer Groupie Podcast brings you discussions, insights, and insider details on planning, producing, promoting, and profiting as a writer.
Welcome to Writer Groupie!
Show Notes:
Hey everyone …. Peace, love, and happiness to you. Thank you for listening to Writer Groupie Podcast and this episode of the Writing Guru. If you are listening, we also have a blog at Writergroupie.net. and if you are reading, we also have a podcast at iTunes. Check out the links in the blog post at writergroupie.net
I want to talk for a little while about our mind and how we think. It’s crucial to get your writing done when your mind is in a state of creative energy.
The truth is, we are always thinking. Our minds are made that way. But we rarely, if ever, have a thought about … well…why we think. So today, let’s do that. Let’s think about thinking.
And no, I am not losing my mind. No I haven’t been smoking anything. No, my drink of choice is still as always coffee. But we should sometimes think about thinking.
Our minds are what we use to draw from the well of creativity. Our minds our thinking minds are the source of all that juice. According to experts — of which we all know I am not one – tell us that our thoughts are mostly made up of recycled ideas. At some point we heard something from someone somewhere and it gave us an emotional response. We liked it or we didn’t, but it stuck. Yes, I heard that from an expert and yes it stuck and yes I am recycling this idea now.
Don’t get lost in this thought. You should just think about what I just said and consider how it is true. How many times have you heard a news story and shared it with someone in your office? Recycled information. How often have you read something in your research and used it in a book? Recycled information.
It’s just true. We hardly ever have original ideas.
And, remember that the attitude we have when we consume ideas that is what forms our identity, or as some would say, our ego, our personality. This is because we develop an attitude, a response emotionally, about what we learn. And that response comes from perception. Now I am going to digress a little from thoughts to perception.
Here’s an example:
What if you heard someone say that lack of education is why there is such crime numbers in our cities? Now, we all know that in some ways, this is true. But that simple statement gives rise to an emotional response. Look at it from the perspective of a homeless person. How would they view crime? A single mother in an urban city how would she see it? A military person – stationed in a foreign country—how would they see it?
If you understand the point I am making – good. Everyone has an emotional response to certain ideas. That emotional response gives rise to their opinion or attitude toward it, and thereby make them think a certain way about it. Perception to ideas creates responses to ideas and thereby solidifies how we think about them. Also, how we feel about them.
I would like to get back to our thoughts now, I think it’s simple enough to understand how our perception via our senses are how we receive information and get ideas. We literally are what we think.
So how does this affect a writer?
Well, as I contemplated this podcast I realized that I am not getting out and having enough experiences in my own life, therefore not having enough input into the waters of creativity. We need to have something constantly going into the water and stirring it around so that we can draw from it. That‘s a poetic way of saying, we need input to create ideas so that we have something to write about.
So, I hope you will go out and find something really fun and creative to do today. It’s just the very beginning of autumn and there are going to be so many fun, fall festivals starting up soon. I love to go to those because they give me a lot of ideas.
At the very least, you can set up at a coffee shop and people watch. I have seen a lot of human interaction in a coffee shop and that interaction helps me write dialog and body language. Here’s an idea…try to go to somewhere to people watch and try to determine what the conversations are about. Are the people mad? What is their body language saying? Are they excited about something? What are their facial expressions?
At the very least, it’s fun to see what they are wearing.
Don’t judge, though. A man is not what his clothing looks like.
Now, when you get back from your creative outing, sit down and write. It’s going to flow so much easier for you because you have received input, analyzed it, created an emotional response to it (and yes, even ambivalence is acceptable) so now you can write. Now you have something to draw from.
Thanks for listening! You can find show notes, contact form, and more at http://www.writergroupie.net