Years ago my daughter introduced me to the concept of BUTT GLUE.
BUTT GLUE is what you need to keep you at your desk when your brain wants to fly away in lots of different directions—in other words, it wants to do anything but write what you are supposed to write and your rear end resists gravity to fly away from the computer desk chair as well.
Example: I turn on the computer. Today I intend to finish writing a chapter. I know what I want to say and where I want the plot to go, but there’s something about what a certain character is supposed to say that I’m not sure about. Instead of tackling that knotty detail, I wander into the kitchen and make popcorn. Then I remember that I haven’t watered the plants. By the time I water all the plants, I have to go to the bathroom and I notice that the toilet needs cleaning, so I clean the toilet. Then my friend calls and I talk to her for a while. I head back to the computer, but then I remember the popcorn and go back to the kitchen. I also need a drink, so I get that. In the meantime, I’ve forgotten pretty much what I wanted to do with the chapter. What I need is BUTT GLUE. If I had some BG, I would have already have the chapter pretty much written. Sigh.
I’ve also found out that the amount of BG a person has is in direct relation to how early or how late the person who is writing is awake. For some reason the very late night hours or very early morning hours tend to be when the most BG is present in a person’s chemistry. The farther away from those hours PLUS the number of other people who are awake in the house (especially children), or in the same neighborhood for that matter, he more BG is diminished. Inversely, BG is increased as more people are asleep while you are awake.
Some types of music increase BG ratios when the number of people awake in my house also increase. For me, putting in ear buds and turning on my iPod to music without words keeps BG from diminishing as rapidly as it usually does. The busier the music or if it has words, the less BG I have. It may be different for different people.
Good luck finding your BG stimulator!
Reading to Write
If you ask most authors how to become a good writer, they will say to read a lot. Right! Reading to write is an absolutely true principle!
What does reading a lot do for you?
- Reading changes your long term memory and the structure of your brain. If you read words and sentence patterns and logical order of information over and over again, the neurons in your brain grow new places [axons] to store this information. So in your brain you store good grammar and sentence structures. Then when you try to write, or even when you speak, these sentence patterns and words become useful as they come out from your long term memory for you to make your own sentences and other texts. If you want to know more, read a great book by Nobel Prize winner Eric Kandle In Search of Memory.
- Reading gives you information. The Roman scholar Cicero said nearly 2,000 years ago that a good writer needs to know everything. The more you read, the more you will know about all kinds of things. When you write, sometimes you need to know just where Chicago, Illinois is or what kind of fish is commonly caught by New England fishing boats or what kind of car is usually driven by Italians. If you don’t already know that information from all the reading you’ve done, if you read a lot you know where to look to find the information you need.
- Reading increases your vocabulary. A good example of this principle comes from my nine-year-old grandson who thought he’d stump me by saying that I had a lot of pulchritude. I didn’t know if I should thank him or scold him until I looked it up. Pulchritude means beauty, so I thanked him. My grandson laughed and laughed because he had stumped me. I asked him where he got that word. He said he’d read it in one of his books. You can learn lots of new words by reading. I put several interesting words in my books because I hope you get some new words for your vocabulary.
- Reading gives you new ideas. As you read, think of ways to change the story, or pick a small part of the book you’re reading and ask yourself “What if?” Then you will have lots of ideas for your own writing.
Riding to write
There are days when writing creates energy and I can’t get enough of it. I can write for 10 to 14 hours at a time and the words just flow. Then there are other days. On those days I can’t seem to get more than a couple of words down. I stew and stew and nothing comes. I can’t seem to do a thing. One of the things that helps break the tension is a motorcycle ride. I don’t hook up to radio or music—I just ride. Out there with just me and my bike, I ride for an hour or several, but the result is always a sense of contentment and then I can get back to writing. Sometimes while I ride it even helps to try to hash out something that’s bothering me about what I’m trying to write. Just me and the bike and this beautiful country, baby.
Exercising to write
Sometimes what is blocking my ability to write is plain old stress. If I don’t have time to go for a motorcycle ride, I may have time to exercise. Exercising releases endorphins that make us happier and relieve stress. The less stress I feel, the better I can write. Sometimes when I have a particularly hard thing to write, I keep that as my focus while I do my exercises and I can often come out of my exercise session with the solution.
Writing to write
When many authors are asked about how to become a great writer, they answer—write. You can do many things to improve your writing, but none of them will come to anything if you don’t write. I don’t just mean that you should write a little here and there. I mean you should write every day and you should write more than just a few words every day. Here are some ideas to help you write more and the reasons why they will help you.
- Writing at the same time in the same place every day prepares your mind to write on command. If you sit down at the same time in the same place that you are in the habit of writing, your mind and body will automatically trigger your writing mode. The operative word here is habit.
- Writing often and for a significant amount of time will change your brain in more ways than just about any other activity. You will activate many parts of your brain for all the different aspects of writing. For instance, you will activate the center for sight as you look at what you are writing. You will activate the center for long-term memory of symbol recognition as you remember how to form each letter, the sounds the letters and words make, their meaning, the associations you have for each word and experiences you’ve had where those words were used previously, and many other things. If you practice writing over and over again, you will make the writing activity part of your long-term memory that you can access whenever you want, just like a basketball player who has practiced slam dunks over and over can all of a sudden explode into a slam dunk. Your brain will grow places [axons that grow on neurons] to store these memories in ways that alter your brain structure.
- If you get up early in the morning to write before you are distracted by the cares and business of everyday life, you will be able to focus your abilities and thought processes on the writing task at hand.
- If you write down what you want to write about the next day just before you go to sleep, your subconscious will have the opportunity to work on the problem while you sleep. Then if you go right to the writing task when you wake up before doing anything other than turning on the computer and going potty, you will come up with ideas more easily than you ever thought possible.
- If you are stuck on a problem, try freewriting about the problem. Freewriting is when you just write about whatever comes into your head without stopping to think. Some writers do one of several variations of freewriting before they write in order to get the juices flowing. What freewriting does is access the long-term memory and analytical skills. You can freewrite for a fairly long set amount of time or for several short bursts in a row. Do what works for you.
- Another strategy is to look at what you wrote last. Read it over and then go from there.