We often offer tips, tricks, tools, and discussions of basic decency and kindness to help writers. This helps some people, but not others. Depending on who’s reading, any given tool might come across as obvious, preachy, condescending, toxically optimistic, excessively negative, or, somehow, all of those things at once! Good advice is often only good advice when we’re ready to hear it.
So we’re trying something else. We’re starting a series called “Yes, but How?”, which will focus on deep-diving into subtleties and complexities of good advice. In essence, it’s us nerding out about concepts, frameworks, and practicalities of how to do the things. We hope this will help writers tweak tools to their needs.
This week, let’s talk about mindfulness.
Mindfulness
Mindfulness is both a psychological state and an individual trait. State mindfulness waxes and wanes throughout the day. Trait mindfulness is unevenly distributed; some people are more inclined to being mindful, but it is a skill one can cultivate. Mindfulness helps writers be patient, persistent, and at the same time open and creative. It facilitates flow, deep work, and kindness. Any struggle is easier if done mindfully.
How do we train it? The basics are simple: (1) find an object to focus on, and (2) notice when focus has shifted and bring yourself back. Do this for a specific amount of time to train yourself. That’s all, really. Of course, there are a few ground rules for making the most of it.
First, you should use soft vigilance rather than hard fixation: focus the way you focus on a piece of music or a painting, not the way you focus on a single voice at a loud party. Second, the object should be dynamic and easy to follow. Breathing, sounds, mantras, or walking movements are popular objects, but there are many out there. Third, the way you bring yourself back should be gentle and kind, not judgmental. How you re-engage attention after getting distracted is the most important part. Re-engaging is how we train mindfulness. Start with short sessions, and gradually increase the duration. It slowly gets easier. Then more challenges will come up. Rinse and repeat.
Nuances of Mindfulness
We can’t recommend mindfulness practice enough. Both of us here are long-time meditators. But there are some caveats, especially around the way it’s explained. Mindfulness practices are commonly presented a techniques for “clearing your mind”. This is an oversimplification. The “clear your mind” attitude comes from an over-generalization of advice for beginner mindfulness practitioners, for whom thoughts are usually the most subtle and insidious distractions. Trying to clear our minds tends to backfire. Mature mindfulness includes mindfulness of thoughts as they arise, grow, and fade. At a certain level practice, it’s better to just let thoughts do their thing rather than pushing them away. They’ll tend to calm down, but not disappear. And that’s just fine.
Mindfulness is really about being present with whatever arises. It’s about getting grounded. And that looks different at different times.
Mindfulness and Writing
A bit more subtly, mindfulness is sometimes explained as developing “nonjudgmental awareness of the present moment”. This is a better gloss on mindfulness than “clearing your mind”, but it’s still not enough. We think the best rendering of mindfulness is “attunement to the subtleties of attention”. This is harder to grasp, but we think it captures what’s worthwhile about mindfulness. Mindful states are those where, instead of being carried by habits of attention, we engage them actively in something like a dialogue. We open new ways of intervening and working. Perhaps we need slightly more sensory clarity in one moment, and a wider focus in another. This sort of tweaking is available with sufficient mindfulness.
So, since writing is mostly a “thinky” activity, mindfulness in writing should neither clear the mind, nor focus exclusively on the present moment. Writing is mostly focusing attention on what’s not present. This is obvious in fiction writing, but also grounds good non-fiction writing. Merging the lovely, grounded energy of mindfulness with the thinky, striving energy of writing is an interesting challenge that each writer has to explore themselves.
The world of mindfulness is vast beyond measure. One must try and taste mindfulness for oneself. You’ll go through ups and down, openings and droughts, but you will learn to gently and kindly make your mind more pliable and suitable for great exertions of thought!