In the reflection that started this year we talked about the importance of kindness in achieving your goals. Being kinder to ourselves is wonderful aspiration, but often the specifics of how to do it are lacking. Many people who talk about kindness use inspirational or flowery language to paper over the gaps. So today we’ll try to say a few specific things about how to be kind to ourselves in the writing process.
Generally speaking, kindness flows is context-sensitive ways. We’re naturally wired to be kind to babies, kittens, other small fuzzy animals, and the like. Adult-to-adult kindness is more complicated. Kindness to ourselves is usually counterintuitive, especially when we most need it. We really don’t have a comprehensive theory of how to get kinder to ourselves. We doubt that anyone does. And yet, it’s perhaps the deepest factor in a sustainable and productive writing practice.
Kindness in Writing
Developing kindness in writing is lifelong process. Being kinder is mostly an inner game of gradually tweaking our habits with great patience and persistence. Advice from athletic and martial arts training is relevant, with suitable modifications.
Today we’ll look at four cases where kindness helps, but where it is hard to tap into.
Mind-Wandering
First, there’s the case where we find our mind has wandered. How we catch ourselves and bring ourselves back makes all the difference. Do we get annoyed with our flighty habits or do we find a moment to appreciate the skill with which we caught ourselves? We have to train our minds like we train puppies to sit. Too much sternness is counterproductive. Not enough firmness is also counterproductive. Find the happy middle.
It’s important to accept that we only catch ourselves in distraction a shockingly small amount of the time. No writer is a distraction-free ninja on their first, or 2000th try. We need to do endless reps to strengthen the noticing muscle. Encourage yourself with a bit of kindness.
Writer’s Block
Second, there’s the case of facing down writer’s block. Typically, when we hit that wall, we are disappointed in ourselves and habitually generate tension. That tension crushes any hope of an idea actually emerging, since it locks us into very tight, black-and-white patterns of physical and mental activity. So much of writer’s block is spiralling in writer’s block. Kindness here often boils down to letting go. Let go of any obvious tension. A few deep breaths help. Taking a time-out helps. Whatever little thing you can do to slow the spiral. In time, the spirals get less rapid and recovery comes naturally.
Editor Brain
Third, there’s the case of reviewing what you’ve written and not liking it. How do we make the editor brain more kind? By keeping it focused on the task at hand! Also by keeping it from spinning out into endless, unhelpful inferences. (You know the ones: about your capability as a writer, about yourself as a virtuous person, about your writing as a whole, about other people’s imagined reactions to your early drafts.) Editor brain and its sharp criticism has a role to play in the writing process, but it should be limited to cleaning up this piece of writing. Editor brain is not the karmic judge of your life! Constraining editor brain to its role allows other parts of you to remind you that you are a worthy person regardless of anything specific you do.
Hitting the Wall
Fourth, there’s the experience of losing all motivation, but with a deadline looming. You are aware you should rest and regroup, but it’s not possible. What to do then? The unkind, perhaps habitual response is to coerce the animal energies of your mind and body: to press them into service with tension and mostly unspoken threats. But the counterintuitive move to kindness can actually increase our energy reserves! Accept the wall. Investigate the wall, not to find ways through it, but just to appreciate this experience of being stuck, in this moment, right now. Because stuckness is an integral part of the writerly life, of human life in general. And maybe this will loosen things. Sometimes the stuck places are doors to different rooms. Other times they really are solid walls. Sometimes the only kind thing to do is to crash. This is not a failure; it’s life.
Accept, Observe, Re-Commit
All this boils down to a simple formula: accept, observe, re-commit. Accept the difficulty, whatever it is. Let it exist and be felt. Observe how it comes and goes, how it feels, what the difficulty says, and so on. And then, once enough time has passed, re-commit to the thing you were doing.
The process looks simple, but it’s not. Our ability to do it depends on how kind we are. This sets up a chicken-and-egg paradox. The kinder we are the more we can grow our capacity for kindness by intervening on our behaviour and attitudes. And the more we grow our capacity for intervention, the kinder we can get. We suppose there’s a wonderful promise there: the inner endgame of writing is a wonderful, virtuous circle. But, of course, the start of the process will be clunky and it may seem to go nowhere for a long time. We have to be kind to ourselves when we start too.
How? Well, as we start we have to get inspiration from anywhere we can. Here’s a baptismal speech for newborn twins from Kurt Vonnegut’s God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater. Maybe it will help you.
Hello babies. Welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. On the outside, babies, you’ve got a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of, babies—God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.