Back Porch Studio

Writers make writing look so easy. 

Is writing as difficult for them as it is me? 

I’m certainly not an avid writer but I do write: journals, letters, notes, lists.  I seem to be more of a lister than a writer.  I have many lists of things I want to write about. 

The problem is getting started and I’m easily distracted. 

Of course any distraction could be considered a stalling tactic by the inner critic that seems to whisper disparaging remarks:

“What do YOU have to say?”
“Who wants to read THAT!” 
“You can’t say that!” 

And so, I find something else to do.

Writing is for most, laborious and slow. The mind travels faster than the pen.  

E. B. White

I don’t know about my mind traveling faster than my pen but I do know my mind wanders. 

As for writing being laborious and slow, the over all process, start to finish, is arduously slow but the actual physical writing, putting pen to paper, is almost art-like; pencil and paper meet in a series of lines and curves. (Flash backs of doodling in class comes to mind! A distraction, perhaps?).  

The physical act of writing is fluid and creative a lot like drawing. This notion reminded me of what I learned in Betty Edwards’ excellent book Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. (I highly recommend this book, by the way! We used it for our high school art curriculum.)

But writing is an art form.  Using line, one of the most basic elements of art, handwriting can function as a means of artistic self expression. …letters of the alphabet have evolved into shapes of great beauty that communicate verbally. …linking writing once again to the esthetic purpose of drawing.

Betty Edwards

Without going into all the right brain – left brain detail, one of the main ideas in Betty Edwards’ book, is how to silence the critical verbal left brain by learning to make a shift to the noncritical nonverbal right brain.  It is here, in the right brain, where one looses track of time and where artisans, what ever their trade, get into “the zone”.

A surgeon once told me that while operating on a patient (mainly a visual task, once a surgeon has acquired the knowledge and experience needed) he would find himself unable to name the instruments.  He would hear himself saying to an attendant, “Give me the . . .the . . . you know, the . . . thingamajig!

Betty Edwards

This shift from left brain to right brain is a skill that can be developed by setting up conditions that will allow this shift to happen.

As I was learning to draw following Betty Edwards’ course in her book, I learned some of her techniques that I think have helped me with writing.  She suggests finding a quiet place void of people talking so the left brain doesn’t focus on the task of decoding the verbal signals coming into the brain.  She also suggests listening to instrumental music only; again leaving the left brain void of any verbal messages.  As with drawing, I’m finding this to be a good combination for silencing the verbal left brain critic so I can move on to the art of writing – pencil to paper, lines and curves.

So far, it seems to be working. 

Doodles AND words!

NOTE:  This post took me about a month from start to finish. See what I mean…the overall process takes me so long. Originally posted on my homeschooling blog, Learning All The Time, August 2017.