How to Write: Overcoming linear thought

There are many methods to writing, and many stages within each method. What I'm going to tell you about write now, is how to overcome a particular hurdle that comes up in a particular stage of writing. I recently read Mozart's (the famous composer's) description of his music writing process, and assure you that what he wrote also applies to poetry, rapping, singing, master's degree candidate final exams, and every other type of writing I can think of.

Here's what Mozart wrote,

Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively, but I hear them all at once. What a delight this is I cannot tell!

Have you ever had a song idea in your head, or a poem, or some other form of unspoken, unwritten text, that inspired you, although you hadn't yet written it down? I have! If you are at that stage after experiencing the unspoken text in your mind, where you are anxious to see it on the page or hear it recorded... this article is for you.



There's nothing more disappointing than being stuck or blocked, just one step away from something great. I use to experience that feeling all the time. I would have a great song or poem in my head, but when I attempted to write it down, I would only get the first one or two words out.

I started to notice a difference between experiencing the unspoken text in my mind, and writing/speaking the text with my voice/writing utensil:

In my mind it was all one piece, as Mozart described, it isn't heard successively but all at once. Although describing this in words might make you think of every word of a poem being shouted at once, or every note of a song played at once... it's not like that! It's more like a painting that has lots of characters, colors, and components, but can be viewed all at once. Somehow, words and music can be experienced the same way in the mind - all at once.

I'll describe what use to happen when I attempted to write, but I've also tried to speak the unwritten text at this point, and the same exact problem (and solution) occurs whether you are writing or speaking. However, I prefer writing at this stage, because when the words are on the page, they are most like the original text in the mind... YOU can SEE/EXPERIENCE them all at once (after all letters are just commonly used pictures, and a written text is just a picture made from lots of these commonly used pictures neatly arranged in rows).

So as I mentioned, when I attempted to write it down, I would only get the first one or two words out. Then I would feel like I'd lost the rest of the text, and desperately try to "remember" some other word or phrase, and at least get a few more of the words down, hoping that would help to jog my memory some more.

Then I realized... it's not a ball of yarn, it's a pot of soup! If you're reading this blog, I trust you have an above average ability to follow metaphors. Writing is like unwinding a ball of yarn, it's linear, one letter comes before the next, leading to a word, leading to a horizontal line of words on the page, just like, unwinding yarn leads from one end of the balled up string to the other.



But now think of serving soup, even though each carrot or matzah ball is combined is connected to the rest of the soup, it would be pointless to try to pull out one one item of the soup, and expect the others to come out with it. Instead, we tend to scoop out a bunch of soup items together (with a very big soup spoon).

When you pull one end of yarn from the ball, the rest follows unless you cut it off. But as you lift the spoon from a pot of soup, whatever doesn't fit in the spoon drips off the spoon back into the pot. When you have a finished text already in your head, it tends to be more like a pot of soup than a ball of yarn.

The feeling that you've lost the text after writing one word comes from thinking of it linearly, like a ball of yarn, or like it is written on a page, or like it is heard with the ears (sequentially from beginning to end). Ironically, that frustration takes up more of your mental energy (attention), which actually can force you to lose the text.

Here's what you can do:
1. First take a second to sit down or walk to a place where you can focus (away from people and things that demand your attention). Don't worry they can have you back in a few minutes :)

2. Soup is a lot tastier than yarn, don't worry about writing/speaking your idea, just savor it for a moment, like the aroma of a nice soup that looks ready to eat, experience it for a moment, hear it in your mind, hum it a bit, taste it, touch it, feel it, appreciate it, acknowledge that it is there, and let it be there.

3. Now write/speak/record just one piece of it. Start with the biggest piece you can pull out of your mind, if there seems to be a most important piece.

4. Now go back to step 2, experiencing the whole piece in your mind again. You can think of this like dipping your soup spoon back in the pot.

5. Now go back to step 3, pulling out the next biggest piece on to your paper or audio recorder. You can think of this like carrying and emptying the soup spoon into your bowl.

6. Continue doing this until you have most or all of the original text in written/recorded form.

7. Now you can give that delicious bowl of soup - oops I mean that recording - to someone else. By the way, if you're not planning to share your poems, songs, texts with other people, none of this will work for you.

The whole point of writing/recording your ideas is to share them with people. Your mind will help you get your ideas out to more people, or help you keep them from reaching other people - either way it is extremely efficient. The more you decide to share your ideas, the more your mind will decode your ideas quickly for other people to consume. The less you decide to share, the more your mind will obscure your ideas and prevent them from being understandable. It's your choice.