I am an endless repository of writing advice, mostly superstition and a bit of which I’ve written down. The most useful thing I’ve read recently is this excerpt from Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Repair:
Phaedrus found that rhetoric at the University level was taught as a branch of reason alone. He was also having trouble with students who had nothing to say. Especially one girl, who was a serious, disciplined, and hardworking student. She wanted to write an essay about the United States. Phaedrus told her to narrow it to Bozeman but she couldn’t think of anything to say. Phaedrus told her to narrow it down to the main street of Bozeman. Still nothing. He then said “Narrow it down to the front of one building on the main street of Bozeman. The Opera House. Start with the upper left-hand brick.”The next day she returned with a 5,000 word essay on the front of the Opera House on the main street of Bozeman, Montana.
We get blocked from our own creativity because we just repeat what we have already heard. Until we really look at things and see them freshly for ourselves, we will have nothing new to say. “For every fact there is an infinity of hypotheses. The more you look the more you see.”
The difference between “trying” and “doing” is something I touched on in Day 2: Yoda Timers. I think there’s a closely related difference between “trying to write” and “writing.” Namely: “trying to write” feels like looking for things you already know, whereas “writing” feels like looking at with fresh eyes. This is something a high school art teacher taught me as well, about drawing realism. If you want to write more, pick something and examine it in as high resolution as possible. The amazing thing about reality is its endless, almost unnerving detail.
“Mental energy” is a gigantic rabbit hole; you’ve asked a much deeper question than you think. I would set the frame less as “how do I boost my mental energy” and more as “what kind of crazy crap is sapping my mental energy,” which suggests quite different sorts of ideas to try. I’m also quite worried at the thought of having so little energy you can’t even read.
For starters, take a good look at your health in a broad sense: how’s your diet? Are you sleeping enough? Getting enough exercise? Drinking enough water? Getting even the basics right here can make an enormous difference to your quality of life.
Beyond those basics there’s mental / emotional / social health: do you have a strong support network? Are there people you can rely on for emotional support? Do you touch and get touched by others regularly?
Unfortunately most of the really helpful interventions here are really hard to do if you’re starting out in a bad place. The fastest way to get out is probably to have someone else do it: you can swap “debug days” with someone else where someone spends an entire day trying to figure out with you your biggest bottlenecks and then tries to help you resolve them, and then vice versa.
Edit: There are also “tricks” that people sometimes discuss, such as splashing water on your face and so forth. They probably wouldn’t hurt, especially the ones that are more health-oriented like drinking water and going for walks, but both my experience and my models suggest that most of them will not help in the long run.
Writing something every day seems incredible to me, I often don’t have the energy to read every day let alone write.
Are there any techniques you (or others) use to boost your mental energy?
I am an endless repository of writing advice, mostly superstition and a bit of which I’ve written down. The most useful thing I’ve read recently is this excerpt from Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Repair:
The difference between “trying” and “doing” is something I touched on in Day 2: Yoda Timers. I think there’s a closely related difference between “trying to write” and “writing.” Namely: “trying to write” feels like looking for things you already know, whereas “writing” feels like looking at with fresh eyes. This is something a high school art teacher taught me as well, about drawing realism. If you want to write more, pick something and examine it in as high resolution as possible. The amazing thing about reality is its endless, almost unnerving detail.
“Mental energy” is a gigantic rabbit hole; you’ve asked a much deeper question than you think. I would set the frame less as “how do I boost my mental energy” and more as “what kind of crazy crap is sapping my mental energy,” which suggests quite different sorts of ideas to try. I’m also quite worried at the thought of having so little energy you can’t even read.
For starters, take a good look at your health in a broad sense: how’s your diet? Are you sleeping enough? Getting enough exercise? Drinking enough water? Getting even the basics right here can make an enormous difference to your quality of life.
Beyond those basics there’s mental / emotional / social health: do you have a strong support network? Are there people you can rely on for emotional support? Do you touch and get touched by others regularly?
Unfortunately most of the really helpful interventions here are really hard to do if you’re starting out in a bad place. The fastest way to get out is probably to have someone else do it: you can swap “debug days” with someone else where someone spends an entire day trying to figure out with you your biggest bottlenecks and then tries to help you resolve them, and then vice versa.
Edit: There are also “tricks” that people sometimes discuss, such as splashing water on your face and so forth. They probably wouldn’t hurt, especially the ones that are more health-oriented like drinking water and going for walks, but both my experience and my models suggest that most of them will not help in the long run.