Part of my writing rhythm, I’m embarrassed to admit, involves some version of the following situation:
It’s been two weeks since the date of my last saved draft, and I can’t even remember where I'm at with my writing project. After working up the courage to open the document, I stare at the blinking cursor for a few minutes. Then I go down a Wikipedia rabbit hole that is interrupted by the ding of my email. And suddenly I’m pulled back into answering student questions, preparing class, writing applications, dealing with family situations, and all the other things that kept me from my writing, to begin with.
But lately, I’ve begun to explore mindful writing practices as a way of refocusing, especially after I’ve become estranged from my writing project. The prompts in a little blue book called The Pen and the Bell: Mindful Writing in a Busy World, by Brenda Miller and Holly J. Hughes, have been particularly useful for those moments when I can’t seem to settle down to write.
I recently did a ten-minute free-write in response to the prompt “Think about a hobby […] and describe all the actions you take to perform this activity." First I wrote the steps for one of my favorite cooking methods, en papillote, in which vegetables or fish are baked inside folded parchment paper, creating moist and aromatic dishes. Then I realized that I could think about my writing tasks in the same step-by-step way, and began to imagine which questions I could answer for myself as I began the new section of my project.
Although I would love to be the kind of writer who sits down to write with focused attention at the same time every day, I have found that life does not always cooperate. These free writing prompts have helped me remember to slow down, and take writing one step at a time.
