Battling the Monkey Mind
For me, the biggest challenge of writing is the part where you’re making new things. It requires clearing off a place and a time (and unplugging the internet connection) to get into the zone and reach for the good stuff.
Now, I’m pretty good at the workaday labors—meeting deadlines, organizing interviews, research, editing. But creating is the hardest.
Even though I love my job, you should see how busy I get when it’s time to meet the maker in my brain. The plants need watering! I need another cup of tea! Am I hungry? Do the chickens need tending (especially the one who STILL ISN’T LAYING)? My nails need filing! (To be fair, my nails often need filing. Mostly due to the tending of chickens.)
I have no idea why I get so squirmy when it’s time to make the donuts. You’d think it would be the great release of every day, and I’d look forward to it with pleasure. This John Cleese video on the Brain Pickings website got me to thinking about it. It made me feel better to see that he seems so familiar with the struggle for creative discipline.
Click here for the John Cleese video on creativity.
But here’s my question: Why do creative people have a hard time committing to the act of creation? It’s just sort of mysterious to me. We’re put on this earth to contribute our mojo, and then when it’s time to mojo our hearts out, the monkey mind takes over and suddenly it becomes crucial to surf online for a supper recipe. Next thing you know, it’s time to pick up the kids.
Have you ever felt that way? What do you think it’s about?
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Charity Nebbe
I think about this a lot. Part of my problem seems to be that my mind is at its most free and uncluttered when I’m in motion. When I’m in motion I’m not sitting at my desk writing. When I do write something, even something simple like a promo for work, I find that I am most efficient when I sit at my desk for a few minutes and gather the information that I need, take a short walk (even just down the hall), and then sit back down and write. It’s a ridiculously inefficient way of being efficient.
Clayton Rye
Over the last many years, I have relied on waking up at 3:00 AM. Yes, there is one of those dreaded deadlines usually involved that makes it necessary. But I enjoy the 3:00 AM part because the world is totally mine at that hour. An alarm clock is not necessary. I wake up on my own and realize it is time to sit and let my clear, refreshed mind reflect, contemplate and an hour or two later, I have something to show for my effort. Then it is back to bed and more sound sleeping. I call it my mental homework and it is part of keeping my sanity. I find 3:00 AM the best part of the day.
Elizabeth - Letters from a Small State
The answer, for me, is one that has hope for you!
If creating shit everyday were “easy” and “workaday” then everyone would be doing it, all the time, 8 hours a day. It isn’t easy, though many messages out there like to imply it is so.
However, just like going to the gym, creativity is work, and getting yourself there requires putting on certain clothes and shoes and going to a place we really don’t like all that much (and smells funny, but that takes the metaphor away).
Yes. I do struggle with this too. But I think reading Pema recently, I’ve thought more about what barriers am I putting up in my way to creativity by traipsing down the same mindless of path of giving myself a hard time about NOT doing it (which I have spent years developing a skill for!!). Yay for you that you are acknowledging it! See here…
“Being able to acknowledge shenpa, being able to know that we are getting stuck, that is the basis of freedom. Just being able to recognize what is happening without denial– we should rejoice in that. Then, if we can take the next step and refrain from going down the same old road, which sometimes we’ll be able to do and sometimes we won’t, we can rejoice that sometimes we do have that ability to interrupt the momentum– that “sometimes” is major progress.” — “Taking the Leap” by Pema Chodron
She says that rejoicing in our “sometimes” re-carves a kind of soul path. One we have already tread deeply with negative “Oh crap, I screwed up. Again!” thoughts that we fall back on.
Also, we can accept that our creativity takes the form of “looking” at the world for a while too, and taking it in. Finding and absorbing material for later use.
That’s my philosophy, for what it’s worth.
Jennifer Miller
I have to pee a lot when I’m supposed to be writing…damn monkey bladder is all up in my monkey mind business (see how I did that monkey business thing?). To me, even though I make liberal use of the delete key, when the black letters start coming out on the white screen, they feel irrevocable.
Molly
Because I have to go to the hard places when I’d rather be out wandering around, looking at the flowers.