How to Jump-Start the Writing Process When Your Mind is Completely Zapped
Because we alternate between being humans and becoming zombies
How slowly life moves when you’re dead. Another day, another hour, another night in bed. I want to live awake. I’ve been sleeping. Sleepwalking.
- Author: Pearl Abraham
Does life move slower when we feel dead? For me, it felt like time grinds to a dreadful halt.
In times like this, no amount of external motivation, barking, or additional to-do lists resuscitates and transforms me back into a productive human.
Yes, I experience zombie days as a writer. You too, I know.
We can spring back to writing action by engaging and challenging our natural senses:
- Drink liquids with a strong aftertaste.
- Write with pen and paper (first).
- Move around and talk it out (first).
First, let me explain what it feels like to be a zombie writer.
When Your Brain is Zapped
You can feel a mental dam constructed between you and your thoughts.
You can see, feel, and sense the thoughts are circling in your mind. They are growing in size as you ponder over the topic, building your case for and against.
The topic grows in size and strength, and you can see it emerging in visible shape and form, chiseled by select words and phrases.
But you just cannot extract those thoughts out of your mind.
A dam is placed between you and your next story. And, no matter what you do, you just cannot open the damned dam.
So now, you are looking for the keys to open the dam and jolt the zapped brain back to life.
Method 1 — Send Shockwaves to Weaken the Imaginary Dam Guarding Your Thoughts
I drink liquids with a strong aftertaste.
The precondition? It has to be a healthy drink. A mixed citrus juice drink does the trick.
Natural squeezed and mixed citrus juice drinks that contain a mix of lemon, orange, lime is sufficient to send powerful shockwaves to my brain. It weakens the dam guarding my mind through my taste buds.
Half a bottle in, and I start feeling shockingly alive (again).
Method 2 — Using Pen and Paper to Give Strength to Our Thoughts To Break the Dam
You can always edit a bad page. You can’t edit a blank page.
There are days when multiple thoughts are erupting from my mind. Yet, I cannot bring myself to start a single letter when the cursor on the word document is flashing in front of me.
I have been through many days like this before. This is my secret sauce to jump-start the writing process.
I write using pen and paper.
There is magic in doing so. When we type, we do not engage with the elegance of the words. We bang our way through the keyboard.
When we put pen to paper, we engage with the curves and waves of each alphabet. We can flirt with the fonts by exaggerating the towering height of the capitals and extending the curvatures of the Cs, Ss, Ys, and Js.
Writing them with pen and pen bolds the letters in our minds. When they get bold, they gain strength and traction.
They are ready to crash through the dam.
Method 3 — Talk it Out Like an Ancient Philosopher
We seldom engage our auditory senses when we type or write.
The organ sitting between our ears is sensitive to auditory jolts through our earphones. YouTube can be dangerous when we are bored. We listen and waste our day away before knowing it.
We can apply this lesson to our benefit.
Engage your ears when you are feeling zapped. Talk to ourselves. Imagine that you are Socrates or Plato. Remember, these philosophers didn’t always have an audience. They build strength in their arguments through self-talk.
When you feel that your thoughts cannot be extracted from your mind through writing or typing, talk it out. The first few sentences will take forever to come out because the spacing between them is far and wide in your mind.
As you walk and talk, sentences start appearing in clumps. Once you get to articulate your ideas smoothly through speech, you are ready to write.
Summary
Days like these aren’t rare.
Our minds are actively constructing thoughts one after another. Yet, it just feels like an imaginary dam is put in place to stop the thoughts from flowing out.
For me, the way to destroy that dam is to engage with the sense of taste, feel, and auditory perception.
It weakens the imaginary dam and strengthens the thoughts, allowing them to crash through the wall and present themselves as building blocks of articles and stories.
Give it a try.
It works.
As a content contributor, I write my observations from daily life and my business exposure. Because our life experience is the bedrock of our unique perspectives.