How to Boost Your Writer’s Imagination. Usually, I am all about discipline all of the time. Today I shall noodle a different tune. A tune I make up as I go along. Today I am all about lack of discipline all the time. Today is Distraction Day.
On Distraction Day, my imagination roams. Won’t you roam with me? Our object, if there is one, will be to see what happens, and perhaps be surprised. Our theme will be Less is More. Less careful attention. Less deliberate pursuit. Less clamor after control. Let us let go.
Instead of pushing yourself to do your very best today. Allow yourself to do whatever you end up doing, wherever you happen to be, however you happen to feel. We are not chasing achievement. We are, as the mystics say, simply being here now.
Start with your immediate environment. Where exactly are you? What is going on there? What will go on there when you let your imagination loose and follow the fantasy of whatever scenario may appear. When you allow the nature of the place to topple into the tale that unfolds.
Undiscipline your commitments. Put off your promises. The promises you have made to others. The promises you made to yourself, about what you would do in the several hours ahead. Watch it all slip-slide straight off your plate. Undo your To Do list, just for today.
Populate your presence with whomever happens to show up. Don’t turn off your phone. Don’t silence the notifications signal on your social media. If somebody knocks, answer the door. Invite everyone in by opening up to happenstance.
Stop thinking of distractions as a bad thing. Distractions can lead us off our intended paths. Into adventure. Into unexpected venues. Around a corner we have never before turned. This is Distraction Day. A time to be carried away on whims of chance.
What are your personal time burners? The activities you ordinarily regard with guilt as a waste, especially of your declared intentions. Activities you think of as minimally productive to your career. What is the most difficult of these to resist? Desist from resisting. Indulge instead.
Welcome your own weirdness. David Lynch, frequent traveler of this territory, says, “It’s like fishing. I never know what I’m going to catch.” Take yourself on a fishing expedition. Accept anything that lands on your hook, the stranger the better. Astonish yourself if you can.
Meanwhile, there are a couple of rules to impose upon our anarchic experience of How to Boost Your Writer’s Imagination.
Open your senses wide and turn up their volume. See. Each detail around you at maximum vividness. Listen. To sounds bursting like a revelation. Taste. Any morsel that touches your tongue. Smell. Scents pleasant and unpleasant alike. Feel. Everything, both tactile and internal.
Write it all down. Notes. Fragments of thought. Impressions. Dialog snatches. Only enough to make sure you can summon back the scene, the sensations, the silliness later on. If you spot the spark of a writing idea, record it briefly. Then abandon yourself to distraction once more.
Most important, have fun. Fly free. Resolve to fly into fun again soon. Make Distraction Days a regular event in your schedule. Your unleashed writer’s imagination will reward you richly for doing so.
Alice Orr – www.aliceorrbooks.com
Alice’s latest novel A Time of Fear & Loving – Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Series Book 5 – is available HERE.
Look for all of Alice’s books HERE.Praise for A Time of Fear & Loving: “Alice Orr is the queen of ramped-up stakes and page-turning suspense.” “Warning. Don’t read before bed. You won’t want to sleep.” “The tension in this novel is through the roof.” “I never want an Alice Orr book to end.” “Budding romance sizzles in the background until it ignites with passion.” “The best one yet!”
All 0f Alice’s books are available HERE.
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