Writing | Writer’s Block | Brain | Movement | Writing Tips

When You Want To Write But No Words Come

How to Find the Words Quickly

Writing is easy when you use both your right brain and your left brain: right side for creativity and left side for words and sentences. If you’re stuck, a trick using the infinity sign in the picture above will get you back to writing. Ideas and the words will come together.

You’re ready to write your post for today. You’ve written some notes. You know what you’re going to write about. You’ve walked the dog, made the coffee, and cleaned off your desk. Ready! Set! Oops, no go!

It’s not procrastination. But somehow you just can’t find the words. You start. Stop. Delete. Start again. Delete again. It’s not working. Where is your muse when you need her?

Nothing is wrong with you. You’re just using half your brain. Many of us do that much of the day. Some talk about being right brain or being left brain as if one only had half a brain.

It’s true that most of us have a brain dominance. For example, the accountant who does your taxes every year is probably left-brain dominant. Left-brain dominant folks love numbers, lists, and computer coding.

They excelled in math and science in school. Years ago when schools taught sentence diagramming, the left-brain dominant kids got it right away.

But ask a left-brain dominant kid to write a poem, and he raised his hand to go to the bathroom. Anything to get out of writing poetry.

The right-brain dominant kids were thrilled. Finally no more sentence diagramming. Now time to be creative. Right-brain dominant folks are artists, poets, the creatives among us.

Right-brain dominant folks write short stories and novels. Left-brain dominant writers prefer non-fiction, often with little emotion and no juicy stories.

Let me digress for a moment and ask you a question? What profession do you think has the most people who are neither right-brain nor left-brain dominant? If you guessed orchestra conductor, you got it right. .

Composers, musicians, and conductors excel at using their whole brain. Conductors even use the exercise you’re about to learn for your writing on a daily basis. It’s part of part of their work. Music is both mathematical and creatively expressive.

Let’s get back to writing. You don’t have to get stuck trying to figure out words for your creative idea. Developmental optometrists have an exercise they do with kids who have trouble reading and writing.

Some occupational and physical therapists use the same exercise to help stroke victims. Deborah Sunbeck, PhD, uses this exercise on special rugs and railings to help patients improve coordination and balance. She calls it the Infinity Walk.

The good news is this exercise works for writing blog posts. It’s easy and fast. Anyone can do it — even old gray-haired ladies with arthritis. Doesn’t require special equipment, a video to watch, or a manual to read. (You don’t need Dr. Sunbeck’s rugs.)

Your brain storm indicates that your right brain’s on fire with your writing idea. But when you can’t find the specific words to use, your left brain has been caught napping. You’re about to discover how to wake up the left side of your brain and get the two sides to work together!

Stop reading. Scroll back up the top of your screen where you’ll see a brightly-colored infinity sign with arrows you can follow. Copy, paste, and print the drawing. Now trace around it with your finger, following the arrows and making sure you’re crossing the mid-line of your body.

Put your paper down and do it in the air, tracking the movement with your eyes. Simply stretch your arm out in front of you. Make a fist with your thumb up and in front of your nose. Now up to the left with your thumb, down, around, back to the center. Up to the right, down, around and back to the center.

Again, it’s 3 times with one thumb, three times with the other, and end by bringing your hands together, thumbs on top of each other and do another.

Getting both sides of your brain to work well at the same time is that easy! Any movement that crosses the center mid-line of your body will help, even ironing.

Why Does This Work? Your brain loves movement, and as I’ve said, movement that crosses your center mid-line is best. Why is this so. (This part of the post is for left-brain dominant folks who always want to know “why.”)

We all have a fibrous band between the left cortex and the right cortex of our brains called the corpus callosum.

Whenever we cross the center mid-line of our bodies by moving, our brains create more neuronal connections through the corpus callosum. Literally connecting the left sides and the right sides of our brains.

The stronger this neural connection, the more we’re able to use both sides of the neocortex at the same time. No more stuck writing.

For blog posters and content creators, now you can take your idea — it came from the right side of your brain — and find the words to write your post. It’s the left side of your brain that does words and sentences. The left side that gets grammar, punctuation, and all that other boring stuff.

Try tracing an infinity sign when the words won’t come. And be sure to get up and walk — just walking itself crosses the mid-line. Anytime you’re stuck, moving around will help. And moving in a way that crosses the center mid-line helps the most.

When the weather’s nice, go outside. Walk while swinging your arms right to left and back again, exaggerating this cross-body movement.

Weather’s lousy? Put a couple of chairs apart in your living room and walk around them as if you’re walking around the infinity sign just as you did with the picture.

Make finding the words for your brilliant idea easy by crossing your center mid-line.

P.S. Still wondering why orchestra conductors have the strongest neural connections across the corpus collosum as I mentioned earlier? Their job requires continually crossing the mid-line with their baton.

And it involves understanding the mathematical nature of the music they’re conducting along with its emotional content.

Watch for my forthcoming ebook, Oh Look, There’s a Squirrel and Other Stories.

In addition to writing about writing, I offer words of wisdom to adult ADHDers and to folks who are adopted. I am both. (Many adopted folks have ADHD, often caused from trauma at birth.)

You’ll find me at LivingWithAdoption.com. For a list of common adoption challenges, grab my free Adoption Checklist for Women: 25 Life Issues.

Given raging ADHD, it’s no surprise that focus does not come to me easily! In addition to adoption and ADHD, I also write random stories from my life, what I’ve observed, what’s in the news, about writing and editing, anything that tickles my fancy.

For a Black Lives Matter from a white perspective, see my stories For White Folks from an Old Gray-Haired White Woman with Arthritis. And Teaching Kindergarten at an all-Black school.

You might also like musings on Staying at Home because of COVID 19: The Good, The Bad, and the Not So Ugly.