The writing life is hard.
(And beautiful, expansive, wondrous—all the good things, yes, but right now I want to talk about why it’s hard. Bahhumbug).
Before I started meditating, I was a Type-A hustler workaholic who has literally said the sentence, I don’t understand hobbies. And meant it. (Now I have some hobbies - thank you, Mindfulness, for letting me know it’s okay to have a little fun in life. Still Type A, though).
For so long, all I knew was striving.
Working myself to the bone for my dream of being published.
I wanted the gold star.
I always wanted the gold star.
Now, I think they’re shiny and nice, but I don’t care as much because I’ve begun to understand that you start out with a gold star and simply have forgotten you have one.
Mindfulness helps you rediscover that shining place in you that’s been dark for quite a while.
My Nervous Breakdown
My first book was about to come out and I was finishing up my MFA while drowning in the incomprehensible world of publishing—what do you mean they don’t market the book they bought? Why do they get to keep the draft for nine months, then demand the revision in a matter of weeks? No one likes my tweets, I am invisible, I am worthless, I hate this, I don’t even like writing anymore.
Enter: the nervous breakdown.
Mine happened by degrees, preceded by a manic hustling for my worth (Love me! Love me!) followed by a deep, dark depression in which I was highly functional, yet growing increasingly panicked by creative blocks, decreasing advances (when they don’t market your books, they don’t sell – funny how that works), and a terrible fear of failure. Medication didn’t work and the thought of quitting it all was too awful to bear and seemed impossible, anyway, since I owed several major corporations novels I had yet to write, but had been paid money for…money which was quickly disappearing because I’d moved to New York City and quit my day job. The dream! The nightmare.
Enter Meditation
So I went to the Cape to get some rest: I’d had a total meltdown after a panel and I could feel myself unravelling. The friend I was visiting made me lay down on a couch and listen to a guided meditation. I was desperate, and me laying on this couch was proof of that. It was a weird one—angel stuff and not my thing—but: that shit worked.
Oh, I’d meditated before: on a cliff overlooking the sea in India, at a Korean monastery at dawn (in scratchy monk’s robes thankyouverymuch), in yoga studios at Venice Beach, and in way too many acting classes.
I’m a spiritual misfit, a longtime seeker—this whole going inward thing wasn’t new to me.
But meditation? Nope. I was convinced my mind would not be able to do it. To quote my first agent in an email she once sent me, “Wow, you are a whirling dervish on steroids.” That was a pretty accurate description of mind. (Which means if I could meditate, I bet you can too).
Who else out there can’t stop the spinning, the ideas, the endless thinking, thinking, thinking? Because, I tell you, it’s exhausting.
But then I lay down on that couch and—the reeling slowed down. It didn’t stop. But it slowed down. More dance, less steroids.
I didn’t have an epiphany, or a major spiritual awakening. I just realized that this was good for me.
What Meditation Isn’t
I understood instinctively that meditation wasn’t a way to check out, but a way to check in. The teachers I began to work with over the next months and years showed me that meditation is a tool for working with our minds, to understand them. To observe them. To befriend them. If you’re looking for entertainment, a chill-out session, that’s just a Band-Aid solution. The real healing is in the silence. You and your mind.
When I first began meditating, I thought it was supposed to transport me to some non-thinking bliss state, but that’s not it at all (though some meditation styles go that route, that’s not the kind I’m talking about here). In this space, we release expectations. We let go. And, oh man, letting go for someone like me feels so freaking good. Sitting there, following the guided instructions, they seemed…manageable. Like something I could maybe do. And after I got up off that couch where I had to find my spirit guide and talk to an angel, I felt more grounded, more connected to myself.
And I wanted more. (Without the side of woo, though).
The poet Mary Oliver tells us that, Attention is the beginning of devotion. And I suppose that’s what my meditation journey has become—a practice of attention.
Which, if you really think about it, is all writing really is. For quite a while now, meditation—and by extension, mindfulness—has become a central part of my life, and my writing process. It’s been incredibly transformative, so much so that I got certified to teach it and share the practice with the writers I coach, the students I teach, and anyone who will listen to me yammer on about it. Sometimes, the characters in my books start meditating, too.
One of the writers I work with told me that a bit after she started meditating, a friend glanced at her and said, “You look free.”
Students tell me that they are flowing more, less blocked, don’t snap at their kids as much, and can handle the stress of agents / editors / rejection much better.
People, this WORKS.
The author Mary Quattlebaum was the first writer who showed me that this practice could support my writing when she began a workshop I was taking during one of my MFA residencies with a guided meditation before we began some exploratory work.
Just a few minutes of sitting there in the silence unleashed creative flow.
The Benefits of Meditation For Writers (Abridged Version)
In my own experimentation, I’ve found this to be true, as well. If you need the neuroscience data to back it up, here you go. The cool thing is that there is so much connection between flow states and meditation (see link), so when you’re meditating, you’re actually in the writer’s gym. Pretty nice, right?
My work on and off the cushion with mindfulness and meditation—and the feedback I get from the writers I work on this practice with—has proven to me time and again that this practice is the very best thing out there (that I’ve found, anyway) to help you navigate the ups and downs of the writer’s life. It even helps you with craft and story. (More on that later, too).
Meditation helps build our resilience muscles, so when those rejections and bad reviews come in, we have a bit more perspective when we handle them—they don’t rock our worlds as much as they once might have.
It helps us have better focus when we sit down to write, gives us more flow (seriously), and provides a host of other benefits. Here are a few I have personally experienced:
– The end of major creative blocks
– More flow
– More focus
— More resilience
– Depression and anxiety management
– More perspective during tough times
– A healthier response to my inner critic
– Better attention to detail (craft)
– Deeper connection to self and others
– More awareness of how my mind works so that I can work more skillfully with limiting beliefs and other gnarly creatures of the mind
– Greater emotional intelligence
– Cosmic perspective
– Less hustling for my worth, thus more focus on my creativity
– End of my nervous breakdown
— More compassion and a stronger empathy muscle
– Hope
— A bit o’ ye olde inner peace
— Better habit formation
— Actual, for real, self love, which I like to call “self regard”
Next Steps For Getting Your Butt in the Chair…and the Cushion
I look forward to sharing my insights and journey with you here on the blog and perhaps even in one of my online courses or one-on-one mentorship.
I would absolutely LOVE to hear how this practice is helping your own creative life, so do drop me a line and let me know how meditation supports your writing practice. I know many of you out there are meditators and have much wisdom to offer us.
Free Support
I want to make this practice as accessible as possible - this is good medicine that must be made available to all. So, here are ways you can access support from me at no cost:
My twice-monthly newsletter is all about the mindfulness. I often share guided meditations, exercises, worksheets, book recs, and more. There are also loads of free downloads you get as a subscriber. Get on the list here.
Thousands of writers around the world listen to my meditation “writer dharma talks” and guided meditation on the free Insight Timer App. Links for this are on my mindfulness resource page.
For female-identifying writers, join me and your writing sisters every month for The Well Second Sunday Gatherings, where we use a new word each month as a theme to guide us in all manner of explorations - everything I teach uses mindfulness as a base. These are recorded, so anyone on my newsletter has access to the archive, which is also on my SoundCloud page.
This blog has loads of practices embedded in the posts: exploratory work, how-to’s, mindful mindset for writers, and more.
Here are two posts I want to leave you with:
This second one is a piece I wrote for LA Review of Books that gives you a sense of the spaciousness found in this practice, and what it might open up for you on the page.
Don’t believe me? If you read my novel Little Universes you’ll see just how much this practice can impact craft. Meditation and the concepts that stem from mindfulness and my own Buddhist practice are threaded all throughout this book. It’s the best thing I’ve written to date, and I credit my practice with that.
Sounds pretty nice, right?
Got five minutes? Close your eyes. Follow your breath.
I’ll see you in the silence—
*This post has been altered from the original, which was on the Vermont College of Fine Arts “Wild Things” blog, the official blog of the Writing For Children and Young Adults MFA program (my alma mater), where I had a weekly Mindfulness Monday blog from 2018-2019.