As a self-employed professional or creative, it’s likely that some sort of writing is frequently on your to-do list. But we all have days when getting started on a writing project seems impossible. It can happen when you’re tired or stressed. Or when your brain is full of other priorities. You may also feel blocked when you’re struggling with your writing intentions or the direction of a current project.
Or perhaps, perfectionism is rearing its head and whispering that you can’t start writing until you’ve got the project on your plate all figured out. Or you’re just not feeling at all inspired.
Bestselling sci-fi and mystery author K.J. Heritage has a solution for this problem — “If I relied on inspiration alone, I’d spend most of my time waiting around, staring out of the window and not writing… if I don’t know how to begin, I type the following mantra over and over: ‘The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.’ …The actual process of typing flips my mind into ‘writing mode’. And, after a short time, something sparks and I’m off.”
K.J. has learned to take advantage of muscle memory to jump-start his writing. If you make the motions of doing a certain thing, studies suggest that the area of your brain governing that activity will be stimulated. Neuroscientists say that when you repeatedly perform an action, your brain develops connections that link that action to any related skills you have previously learned.
You may be skeptical that so simple an idea can produce results, but my own experience suggests that it works pretty well. Your keyboard mantra could be any phrase that speaks to you, rather than K.J.’s typing exercise. For example, I’ve had success beginning with the phrase: “What I really want to say is…” What comes next could be anything. Some examples: “…I feel too stupid to write today” or “…a vague series of thoughts that need more development” or “…I feel like I should be doing laundry right now.”
If I run out of words to follow my opening phrase, I simply repeat it: “What I really want to say is…” Then another thought will emerge. If I just keep typing, holding my intention for what I need to write in mind, useful material will start to show up.
Give this solution to kick-start your writing a try. If you can get your muscles moving on the writing-related activity of typing, there’s a good chance the proper neurons will fire to start you writing in earnest.
