Writing with your eyes closed

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Over at Out of the Blog and Into the Light, Catherine Franz has a great blog post about writing with your computer screen turned off (or, if you have a laptop, with your eyes closed). The idea is that you can just let the writing flow, without getting caught up in the editing and polishing process.

It never really occurred to me, but seeing the written version of what I’m writing is probably my writing’s biggest enemy. When I can see it in front of me, I get caught up in the product, and that makes it harder to write.

I'm trying that idea with this post. As I write this, I'm staring out the window and letting the words flow. I’m definitely going to have to do more writing this way.

That whole idea gets me thinking about how this idea applies to life in general. We get so caught up in the product of what we're doing that we don’t let it actually unfold.

In her post Catherine suggests typing “xxx” if there's something you need to rewrite. So if you start a sentence and want to say it differently, rather than deleting it and starting over, just write xxx and keep going. It's a sign to come back and polish when you look at what you've written.

How cool would it be if we did this in our lives as well? It's like approaching everything in a two-stage approach. 1) Create and 2) polish.

Creating lets you step out of your comfort zone and try new things. It uncorks the bottle and lets the juices flow. Polishing then goes back and tidy up what you've created.

What are the possibilities for “writing with your eyes closed” in your life? What do you want to do /create/achieve that an urge to have it "perfect" is getting in the way of?

What could your life look like if you took a two-step approach to it and really let it flow?

Pretty amazing, I'm guessin'.

(OK, now it's time to go back and polish what I've written so you can make sense of all of this.)

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Brought to you by Curt Rosengren, Passion Catalyst ^TM

 

Comments

[heather]

agree. i recently read 'No Plot? No Problem!' which is about writing a book in 30 days, but with your editor also turned off for those 30 days. i'm waiting on the 30 day marathon (too many projects at the moment) until things are a bit quieter, but meantime it has inspired me to put the editor at bay as long as i can. it really helps.

[Kimberly]

I think it's important to turn off the actual editor too!

When I was in graduate school I had to do a lot of writing (both academic and creative/journal writing) and I would get frustrated when I couldn't get myself to focus. Then I took a class where we were talking about how technology mediates communication and it occurred to me that one of the reasons I had such a hard time focusing was the tool I was using--Microsoft Word.

Ultimately, MS Word is all about presentation. It forces consciousness of spelling, grammar, margins, spacing, length, etc. into the forefront of our minds. I don't know about you, but I find that *really* distracting (and I didn't even know it!). I had two solutions: 1) Write in Notepad, 2) Create an unformatted template in Word. That means small margins, innocuous font, turning off white space and for the love of all that's good and holy grammar and spell check.

The result was that my writing was more about what I said, and less about what it looked like. I wish I had thought of the trick in this post too though. I think closing our eyes while writing will help us get in touch with our inner voices. Great tip!

[Alex Fayle]

That's why I hand write almost everything first. The temptation to edit is much less when you have pen to paper.

The computer frees the editor, even if I wasn't looking at the screen. The pen and paper method also slows down thought, allowing it to flow in a steady manner that doesn't overwhelm.

[Curt Rosengren]

Excellent suggestions. Funny how we get bogged down by the technology that is there to make things easier, isn't it?

Re turning the mental editor off, when I write (at least if I'm trying to create a polished end result), I have to look at it as first creating a lump of clay with an initial dump of words and ideas, and then going back and sculpting it.