REFLECTIONS ON THE CREATIVE PROCESS, PART 4

Writing is a Sport: Treat Yourself Like a Pro Athlete.

Winning the Inner Game means more flow and creativity.

Check out Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

Make a list of all the activities that require hand-eye coordination, visualization, intuition, strategy, concentration, and the ability to stay focused in the present…

I’ll wait.

Are you done, yet?

How about now?

I created the pause above in the hopes that you would actually do this exercise, instead of scrolling down to find the answer.

As someone who has played and coached tennis at a professional level, I can’t stress enough the importance of learning to value process over results.

Process is internally generated and within your control, while results involve external feedback from factors and people over which you have very little control.

This information is so important, I going to repeat myself and make it a fancy pull quote so it might make you stop and think.

“I can’t stress enough the importance of learning to value process over results. Process is internally generated and within your control, while results involve external feedback from factors and people over which you have very little control” — An important life lesson brought to you by yours truly.

Was writing on the list I asked you to write a minute ago?

It should have been.

For most of us, writing is a passion, perhaps an addiction, and there’s a reason for it.

Like playing an intense tennis match, exercising for over 20 minutes, or engaging in the world’s oldest and still favorite sport (wink, wink), WRITING RELEASES ENDORPHINS.

In “The Psychology of Writing”, Dr. Ronald T. Kellogg argues that writing is a basic human need.

Studies on the effect of writing have “been shown to strengthen immunity, improve memory and sleep, and speed recovery in patients suffering from asthma and arthritis, cancer and AIDS.”¹

Writing is an activity that combines physical and mental components, releases endorphins, and is a core function of human activity.

For some of you, learning how to view your creative process as a writer from the perspective of peak performance will be a life-changing experience.

I’m going to break up the writing process into three parts that parallel what happens in sports: preparation; performance; and recovery.

Part 1: Athletes spend almost all of their time preparing and recovering from the actual game. Can writers can do the same thing?

First, we need to compare how world-class athletes prepare for competition and what writers need to do so that each group can maximize the possibility of achieving peak performance.

For professional athletes, preparation is now a 24/7 occupation, only interrupted by the actual sporting event itself.

In 1986, Sports psychologist Dr. James E. Loehr, author of “Mental Toughness Training For Sports” interviewed a couple of hundred world-class athletes and found common mental and emotional states that they experienced during peak performance.

Dr. Loehr called this special time when everything comes together on the field as the Ideal Performance State (IPS).

This correlation between states such as high, positive energy and peak performance was a huge step forward in the evolution of sports science because it posits we can practice the creation of those highly desirable mental and emotional states before a competition, and then monitor and self-correct these states during competition.²

Writers have their own methods to prepare, and you need to track your performance over time to figure out what helps you get ready the best.

The first part of a writer’s preparation is to block out a chunk of time to do the work, establish a routine, and try to never waver from it. Almost every major author talks about a favorite time and location to do their writing. And the location usually means a place where they won’t be interrupted.

As writers, we spent a lot of our time observing life and the foibles of human beings. Add to that the wisdom that comes from our life experiences, general knowledge and doing research specific to your writing topic.

To take your preparation to another level, you should think about improving your craft through writing books, classes, and participating in writers’ groups.³

In addition, I strongly recommend you add exercise as part of your preparation.

Here’s what novelist and writing coach Larry Brooks had to say about the connection between exercise and creative thinking:

“There’s something about taking yourself to the wall, to the point of the sweet pain that signals you’ve given it everything. Kinesiologists will tell you that’s an endorphin high. Nothing but bio-chemicals kicking in. Funny thing about bio-chemicals, though: they can take you to places you wouldn’t go otherwise.” — Larry Brooks

Finally, after laying the groundwork, different writers, depending on their genre and personalities, will do varying amounts of planning and outlining before entering the performance phase of the writing process.

Knowing the starting point and ending point of a story, as well as some landmarks along the way to act as bread crumbs, is very helpful if we are going to let our minds go off in an infinite number of creative directions.

Professional athletes recognize that peak performance is not a controllable state, so work at preparation and then observe without the expectation of something magical happening.

Think of professional athletes as farmers and peak performance as a plant.

The farmer does everything to nurture the seed: prepare the ground, plant, water, and protect the seed from extreme temperatures, insects, and animals.

But the farmer can not make the seed sprout and eventually turn into a fruit tree that will feed the farmer’s family.

In sports, an athlete has no idea how each day will turn out.

In spite of years of training and all the work they do with a host of support people, professional athletes still have no idea what’s going to happen in advance.

By letting go of expectations, athletes strive to maximize their potential in every performance, regardless of their level on a given day.

Poor performers are those athletes who are undone by their expectations.

If on a scale of 1 to 10, the body isn’t functioning at peak efficiency, for some reason, an athlete might only be able to perform as a 4.

The difference between the true champions and the lower-ranked performers is how each athlete handles this challenge.

Champions (who often play like an 8) recognize their limitations on a given day and gives everything they have to be the best 4 possible.

In tennis, that could mean hitting more balls near the center of the court and having the will to run every ball down to make each point last longer and extend the match.

After 30 minutes or an hour of effort, sometimes the champion finds their feel and performs like a 5, which causes a rush of confidence because they feel like they are improving. That small improvement might be enough to win the match or cause an opponent to lose concentration.

On the other hand, if a lesser player starts playing below their expected level, they may be unable to deal with that disappointment. By forcing their play to match expectations, they may end up making tons of errors. The resulting loss of focus and frustration will cause them to play at an even lower level, and they’ll lose badly.

I know how this works because I learned this lesson the hard way during my playing career.

Now think of how regular people deal with expectations and its effect on performance.

• There is a much tighter range of performance when you do the same job every day. A person could be hungover or emotionally distraught and still get through the day without being fired, even if the people around you know you’re off your game.
• Because our poor job performances are more difficult to measure, we fall into the trap of believing that we can expect the same results, regardless of the preparation.

Well, guess what?

Writing is like a sport, and you cannot function at an elite level if you don’t put the work into becoming mentally tough.

• As a writer, how well do you deal with pressure and expectations? The answer is to stay focused on the process of creating. In meditation, we are taught to observe a negative thought or emotion, without judgment, and allow it to fade from our consciousness like a leaf floating down a river.
• How much time have you put into maintaining the discipline of writing? Even if your allotted time every day is only 10 minutes, just getting stuff on paper, regardless of its quality, is a victory.
• How well do you respond to arbitrary, external results? The less we worry about things we can’t control (curation and the algorithm), the better we can focus on doing our best work.

If you are struggling as a writer or having writer’s block, the problem has almost no connection to your writing ability.

It has everything to do with your ability to focus on the present, get something down on paper, and let go of expectations. More on that later.

Part 2: To achieve peak performance, we need to act without instructions, expectations, or judgment.

In 1972, Tim Gallwey wrote “The Inner Game of Tennis,” and it has been one of the most influential — and misunderstood — books in the history of sports psychology.

In spite of selling two million copies and being used by everyone from Seattle Seahawks head coach Pete Carroll to Major League Baseball players to sex therapists, the Inner Game remains a difficult skill to master.

Most of our lives, we have been trained to absorb and interpret written language.

That is the antithesis of how the mind works when we are performing in sports, or the arts (playing music, dancing, creating artwork, and writing).

The Inner Game

Tim Gallwey writes of achieving a place of stillness, where we quiet the mind and reach a Zen-like quality of non-judgmental observation and perfect focus in the now.

He divides human nature into two selves.

Self 1 is the part of our mind that is logical, verbal, sequential, and rule-following. We use it to function in most work and school situations.

Self 2 is the part of our mind that is intuitive, athletic, creative, visual, spatial, and natural.

According to Gallwey, the battle in a sport goes on inside us, not with our opponent.

Winning the Inner Game is the ability to turn off Self 1 and allow Self 2 to do its thing. To do this, we need to quiet Self 1 and allow Self 2 to act without conscious effort.

Let me give an example of how peak performance works in athletics.

Descriptions of peak performance in athletics, also known as being in the “Zone.”

When you read the comments of athletes talking about their best performances, they will say things like this:

• “The ball looked huge, and I could see the seams moving clearly.”
• “The basket looked so big I just knew the ball was going in.”
• “I could see everything happen on the field before it happened.”

These experiences are all ways to describe the experience of peak performance.

When a professional athlete enters the “Zone,” they have perfect clarity. No thoughts or emotions cloud perception. There is no attempt by the mind to control the body, and it is allowed to react instinctively and instantly.

In post-game interviews, reporters ask athletes what was going through their minds at the pivotal moment during the competition.

The athletes make up an answer to get the interviewer to stop asking questions, using some combinations of clichés that everyone expects them to say.

Do you want to know how that internal conversation really goes?

I was a professional tennis player and it goes like this:

“…………………………………..[playing, running, breathing]…………… [stops running after the point ends, breathing]……………………….………[hears the score announced]………………………………………………….. works to slow down breathing]…………………………………………….….[looks at the ball boy to get the ball to serve]…………………………………[thanks ball boy when they take my towel] ………………………….…………[visualizing where I want to serve]………………………………..……………. how I’m going to play the point]…………………………….………………... [goes into service ritual]………………………………………………..……… [deep relaxing breath]…………………………………………………….…… starts next point]…………………………………………………………….”

When you are in the “Zone,” the verbal, logical, sequential, judgemental, instruction-giving part of your mind is shut down. There is no conversation going on.

As the game is being played there is also very little emotion,⁴ as these displays deplete energy resources that are needed during the match.

In writing, even though we are processing thoughts into a verbal message and then transferring them via the keyboard, there is a similar kind of internal quiet.

As I write these words, I’m not thinking about whether this article will get 2,000 claps [s-u-b-l-i-m-i-n-a-l m-e-s-s-a-g-e, p-e-o-p-l-e],⁵ how I’ll never make it as a writer, or an argument that I had with my wife.

None of that superficial external bullshit gets in the way. (Sorry, honey, not you, the argument!)

I allow my mind to flow wherever it wants to go.

I don’t judge the process, stay in the present, and have no emotional reaction, other than when I think of something funny to add to the story and start laughing.

If achieving that kind of focus is a problem, train your mind through yoga, meditation, martial arts, or any activity that involves physical discipline, calmness, and relaxation.

For people who experience writer’s block, I say you are experiencing a far different type of blockage.

Straining to write the next big thing only creates a form of mental constipation.

Of course, you’re going to be blocked.

It’s impossible to predict what will assure the desired response by thousands or millions of people you don’t know.

If I were able to get together with any of these people, and they were willing and able to speak to me while we walked my dogs or went shopping, or tried to bake some cookies or almost any other physical activity, they would already be writing.

Even the simple act of creating a transcript of the conversation is a form of writing.

Once we remove our expectations and judgments, getting into the writing zone is as natural as breathing.

To quote Dr. Kellogg in his book, “At the heart of human nature is the drive to make sense of our world. We do this moment by moment in interpreting our daily experience.”

From the book’s description, “The human ability to render meaning through symbolic media such as art, dance, music, and speech defines, in many ways, the uniqueness of our species.”

We are wired to tell stories from birth.

You can find your writing voice if you work on the process instead of focusing on the results.

Part 3: Recovery.

Once the game is over, professional athletes maintain their focus because the preparation-performance-recovery doesn’t end until the season is over.

Professional athletes don’t get too high or too low emotionally, regardless of the result.

They follow their training discipline and stay focused on the present.

Afterward, they work on physical recovery, review what they did during the match, use their rational mind to figure out ways to solve the puzzle of each opponent’s game, visualize the next contest and then rest the body and mind.

There’s very little time to celebrate, nor can an elite athlete afford to waste too much emotional energy because they need to focus for the next day.

For writers, recovery is the time we leave our imaginary world, use the rational, logical, rule-following part of our mind, and then turn it off again.

That part of the self can evaluate the writing, edit out the typos and grammatical errors, fill in incomplete sentences and thoughts, and look for holes in our plot or the logic of the story.

It takes real discipline to maintain a clear mind.

Perfection is the enemy. Fear that the article is not good enough is the enemy. Self-loathing is the enemy. Anything that extends the editing process well past the basic kinds of corrections you know how to make in your sleep can become a hindrance.

The final step is to let go of the work. Either publish it and let the chips fall where they may or send it to a writer’s group or some trusted friends to get their perspectives.

By assigning a limit to the editing phase, we allow ourselves to prepare for the next writing “contest.”

Writers need a rest phase, just as much as an athlete.

Because writing is so personal and subjective, we need time and space to separate ourselves from our creative babies.

With enough time, we can view our work from a place of detachment, see the value in it, and notice the areas that need repair.

If you have questions about the Inner Game, please ask them in the comments below.

As I said before, helping someone experience the inner game is almost impossible through merely reading the book.

When I read “The Inner Game” as a young tennis player, it made no sense to me and I couldn’t apply it to playing situations.

A couple of years after I retired as a player, an Inner Game coach showed me an exercise from the book on the court, and the light finally went on in my head.

I’ve been playing the Inner Game ever since, so I try to apply those principles to any creative activity in my life.

Good luck on your journey.

FOOTNOTES:

¹Centennial College, “The Writer’s High” Sophie Hamr 11/7/2016.

²For example, high positive energy had the highest correlation with peak performance in his study. There are exercises we can practice before and even during the competition that can move us out of the other three quadrants of the chart that maps our energy level and the emotional component of that energy.

Jim Loehr’s Ideal Performance State (IPS) is a juiced-up goal-oriented version of Tim Gallwey’s journey to enter the Zone, in his Buddhist inspired work “The Inner Game.”

Gallwey also explored using Buddhist principles to improve creativity with his book, “The Inner Game of Music.

³Over this last month, I made a sincere effort to objectively view my writing and address areas where I could improve.

There are three writer/teacher/coaches whose articles have taught me a lot: Linda Caroll, Dawn Bevier, and Shaunta Grimes.

Go learn from them.

⁴My emotional reaction to 99.9% of the winning shots I’ve hit in my life is no reaction. Recreational athletes get to enjoy their sports and experience thrills that make professional athletes a little envious. Those reactions remind us of being a little kid, long before the game turned into a job.

Take, for example, that backhand up the line passing shot I just hit on the dead run. It is something that club players dream of doing.

But I’ve already hit that exact shot 10,000 times in practice.

There’s no thrill in making the shot again, just a feeling of relief and satisfaction in knowing that I prepared for that moment and came through under pressure.

The only times I’ve ever been really excited on a tennis court is when some crazy situation happens in a match that can’t be replicated in practice, but my body reacts and does something impossible.

Like hitting an overhead off my opponent’s overhead and then watching it turn out to be a lob winner when I’m down match point.

⁵The Buddha always seems to be smiling, so there’s no reason a master of the Inner Game can’t throw in a few jokes. Creativity is a joyful process!