Meditation for Authors

Could this be the fountain of creative source?

The deep well of boundless creativity.

If there were a pill that:

1. Cured writer’s block,
2. Showered you with endless plot twists,
3. Brought back the joy in writing,
4. Whispered character traits into your ear,
5. Woke up your slumbering creative muse,

Would you take it? How often? How about a big dose Every Single Morning?

As often happens here on The Cream, a thought morphs into a post which transforms into a series which later becomes a book. This is one topic that has been itching my creative underarm for years.

I’m going to spill the beans here a little. OK, a lot. Meditation is my secret weapon. Every Single Morning I wake up and the very first thing I do, OK, the second thing I do, is my meditation practice. The next thing I do depends on that second thing. If I’m bursting with new ideas and plot twists and character development and new ideas for books, I’m sitting at my keyboard and trying to get down as much as I can as fast as I can about what I “learned” during my meditation.

Sound crazy?

If it does, you haven’t experienced the world of your inner creative muse quite to its potential just yet.

The Bottleneck

In both the creative world as well as the industrial world, there’s usually a bottleneck. A place in the chain of action where things slow down–or worse: stopped. Usually, yeah, I hate to bear bad news, but it’s usually you.

You see, our subconscious is a glorious universe of pretty much boundless creativity, energy, and, well, joy and fun. I know, sounds like Disneyland. It is like Disneyland. We just don’t visit enough.

What if I could help you find that creative state Every Single Morning in a way that would jumpstart your day to the point where you might want to tone things down because you’re wearing out your keyboard you have so many ideas? What if there was a clarity to your thinking that allowed you to “be done with work” by late morning? So many ideas you weren’t sure where to start? Books and stories and topics in such a waterfall you thought about who could help you get it all done? Or laser focus on your single task at hand?

Sound crazy? I know, it is crazy.

But it works.

It’s Wedensday, June 20, 2018. I’m hesitant to even post this because I think it’s so powerful. I’m not usually one to worry about copycats (also because I think we each have our own method and style even if we put out similar content), but I think this could be really something to help authors–not to mention artists in general.

Meditation for Authors Step by Step

1. Wake up early. There are three tiny words here and each packs a punch. Wake: you’re no longer asleep. Up: you’re not lying down. Early: before you usually do.
2. Use the bathroom. Hey, we gotta do what we gotta do.
3. Drink a glass of water. If you want to get fancy, you could do warm water with a squeezed lemon.
4. Find a safe, quiet place. By safe, I don’t mean from thieves or on the edge of your balcony, but where no one will bother you. The only place I have in our house with a locked door is the bathroom. Make it dark. Wear an eye mask (not yet!). Lock the door.
5. Get comfortable. But not too comfortable. Don’t lie down. Sit.
6. Be still. This is just preparation. Give yourself 1 to 3 minutes of stillness. Be quiet. Listen.
7. Music. This step requires more explanation and is up to personal preference, but get some good headphones, ideally the over-the-ear kind. Again, more on this later what kind of music or there’s the discussion of a guided meditation. More on this later.
8. Junk. Don’t fight it. If your grocery list is on your mind, let it be. “Let’s see, tortillas, kidney beans, don’t forget the sour cream.” Finish your thoughts and move on. 5 minutes max.
9. Let go. If the junk is pestering you, let it go. It’s time to move on. There are as many techniques at this stage as there are villages in the mountains of Nepal, and we’ll work more on this later, but let go. Put yourself in empty space. There’s nothing, absolutely nothing. Listen. Watch (yes, with your eyes closed). Be patient.
10. Allow. If the junk is out of the way and you’ve let go to “whatever you were holding onto,” you can now allow whatever it is to come to you. You don’t have to ask for it or call out to it, but you allow it to arrive. It might be creativity, it might be a new book idea, it might be a new angle on how to help your aunt’s relationship with her neighbor. Let it come. Let it roll over you and take mental notes and let some stuff slide and float towards what you’d like more of.
11. Go with it. If there are things coming up you want to dig deeper into, go with them. If you’re still stuck at junk, you can also stop for the morning and give it another shot in the afternoon or evening or tomorrow morning.
12. Ease away. Make a time limit. For me, my music is a set length (17 minutes, 23, 44, etc.). When it’s over, I’m done.
13. Thank. Don’t skip this part. Thank whoever and whatever came your way. Thank yourself for giving yourself the time for yourself.
14. Open your eyes. Remove your eye mask. Don’t get up yet.
15. Transition. Give yourself 1-3 minutes to transition into your day. You can go over what transpired, just sit still, or enjoy the last seconds of utter peace you might have for … the next 24 hours. 😉

That was fun, right? There are years of experience in those steps. Some of them could fill books.

For now, we’ve begun. Welcome to Meditation for Authors.