Gray Wolf

Tag: brain

  • Fallow Time

    Many moons ago, when I still lived in the Boston area, my friend Freda* and I were having a hard time writing one of our books, and she said our brains needed fallow time. We talked about it — and went with that.

    Just as fields are left unplanted so they can replenish, she thought our writing brains needed to be replenished — by taking a break from writing!

    We stopped work on our book — and each of us went on to do the other things we were doing, and let our writing brains sit fallow for a while.

    Some of our colleagues called it wasting time — but for me — then, like now, it is not wasted time – it is a vastly different type of productive time – and it is nearly invisible.

    Back then, our fallow time was followed by rapid writing time, a finished manuscript, and publication! That period of NOT writing did what it was supposed to do, like the fallow field, we were again filled with ideas and the words to write!

    I sometimes remember this fallow time idea, but I mostly forget the concept – until I was working on my current book about getting stuck, and it came back to me like the proverbial ton of bricks.

    Fallow time was what my brain needed this August and September!

    I have an easier time with how I feel when I can label it — and labeling my brain status as fallow time made it easier for me to connect with what was/is going on.

    I’m almost out of my fallow time, but I am not pushing it — I sit and remember all those other fallow times when the words came back — rushing out and into coherent content — and I know they will again do that — and that’s why knowing I am in fallow time is so great!

    I know it has an endpoint and abundance will reappear!

    The brain energy is coming back!

    And the ideas are flowing!

    PS [sigh] now there is no publisher to clean up the manuscripts, edit, and advertise….that’s on me now….

    *Freda Rebelsky, Ph.D. was my professor in Graduate School — and my best friend, co-author, and colleague. She died in 2009 and I still miss talking to her about Psychology. If you ever had a child development or lifespan textbook by Rebelsky and Dorman or Dorman and Rebelsky — I’m that Dorman.

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  • End of July Commentary

    The July challenge ends today, and I wish to say thank you to Paul and to those who commented on my infrequent posts. You all gave me ideas and encouragement for my “next-up-to-write-projects.”

    Between now and the next challenge I plan to tackle at least two of my current ideas and put them into a series of books. I’ll let you all know how that goes… right now I have the ideas and the motivation!!

    I’ll be unleashing my words to the universe – or at least to Kindle.

    For starters, I’m finishing the one I call ” How to write when you don’t feel like writing” and the one after that will be on lifespan psychology with a focus on healthy aging or living with a nonlinear brain or dealing with stress or …. or …..

    The indoor gardening one needs to start this Fall so I can take photos of what I am doing – that has its own agenda….it can be a follow-along series of books documenting my own process.

    And of course, I need to leave time for any other topics that come to mind as I work on these!

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  • Motivation: lost and found

    For a few days now, I’ve been trying to get myself to sit and write a post – knowing that that never works to motivate me….

    The writing motivation was elsewhere, which is good because it’s those other places that I have been working on this year and plugging away at posting on my blog is something I tend to only do when I sign up for this challenge – and even then I sometimes let the whole challenge month go by without writing.

    This time around I’ve written more than my usual amount because I’ve been willing to sit here and write about why I don’t feel like writing and decide that’s one of the books I’m working on – how to motivate yourself when you don’t feel like writing… Of course that book doesn’t really get done except in spirits because it’s about the issue of not writing

    But probably to distract myself from thinking about why I’m not writing anything, I got motivated to think about psychology. It’s my field. I’ve published several textbooks – I’ve written a lot of articles about it, and I have taught many courses on different aspects of psychology and especially about lifespan development – so I decided to start thinking about writing more psychology books and I spent hours working on that.

    It felt good – but that’s not posting here – yet both of those happenings felt OK.

    Like in the image at the top, all those writing choices are the correct choices!!

    However I look at it it’s a win-win for me!! It got me sitting and writing this, which will keep me going for a bit later today – and again during the week.

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  • The Ideas Are Coming!

    Click arrow to play

    In the past few years, I have learned that I get more done when I work on an every-other-day basis for the heavy-lifting type of “stuff”.

    Yesterday I spent a lot of time on the how to write when you don’t feel like writing book… And I do need to think of a shorter title or a more appropriate title.

    I did some outlining and thinking about this as a series of books. Each book would be complete unto itself so that you don’t need a whole big book if you’re only interested in one aspect of solving the problem.

    I outlined 2 chapters but I wasn’t happy with those… so I took a break and worked on prompt ideas and what I’m calling “asides” which is where I make commentary on some of what I’m writing about – almost like an alter ego for the person reading it. I’m thinking of what to call that and what it could look like as an avatar…..

    I was reminded of when I was a therapist, and some of my clients said before they’d start to do something stupid their head would go “I wonder what Lynn would say about this” and then they would not do it because they knew they knew how THAT conversation would go!

    I’ve said before that very often when I want to write, I often start with images and that’s what happened with the avatar. I began to play with the idea of what an avatar could look like – it could help me ultimately think of what I’m going to call it – or the other way around – if I find a picture, I like then I may know what to call the avatar.

    The book is moving along – as is the heat wave!

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  • Slowly, but surely, “the” book is coming along

    I’m moving at the literal snails pace, although I sometimes think the snails are faster than me.

    Slowly – day by day – I am getting things done for the upcoming “how to write a book when you don’t feel like writing” book. It will have a better title than that, but I’ve been thinking through some ideas like maybe including worksheets or prompts or somethings that work for me and hopefully work for you and/or don’t work for me but might work for you.

    I’m enjoying the thinking process, but that’s me.

    I always enjoy the thinking process.

    It’s the get it down on the computer process that’s hard for me.

    And while all this is going on, we had another heat wave along very dangerously dirty air. I got used to dirty air when I lived in Portland, Oregon. Certainly isn’t fun when you’re subjected to the smoky air, but I feel worse for the people up in Canada where the smoke is coming from because they’re losing everything.

    Hopefully, we will have a lot of rain soon, which will help slow the fires and clear up the air.

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  • Lazy Overcast Day

    cloudy

    I’ve often said I am in need of sunshine because I have a solar powered brain. There’s very little sun today. Therefore, my brain is not going full speed. It’s getting things done. Just not a lot of the brain work needed for the book project.

    But starting tomorrow, we creep back into another heat wave – at least it’s not supposed to hit 100 this time and I am more ready for it [I hope].

    One thing I have learned this summer is there’s a reason I left the mid Atlantic the first time and the heat waves will make me leave the mid Atlantic for the second time – and that thought feels good. It won’t be immediate, but thinking about moving to a cooler climate will motivate me and keep me happy in my “looking ahead to a move” mode. [By the way, I hate moving, and I’ve done it a lot!!]

    But the thought of a cooler clime near cool water will help me during the next hot/humid/buggy spell….

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