The benefits of mindfulness are multiple, from stress reduction to greater levels of happiness, but I want to talk about how mindfulness can work for a writer specifically. Not from the point of view of a spiritual or meditative practice, but rather how combining writing and mindfulness enhances your writing. I believe this applies to any kind of writing, by the way. Personally it helps me with blogging and writing feature articles as well as with poetry and creating fictional characters and worlds, and it helps with my writing mindset too.
Combining writing and mindfulness comes down to observing the world around us with writer’s eyes. Observation is a writer’s super-power. In my writing courses I call this ‘noticing things’, which makes it sound less powerful than it is, because I think it’s pretty special. By the way, I know ‘observation’ seems like it has a visual bias but I don’t intend it that way. I mean the kind of observation that involves all of the senses. Imagine how much you could improve your writing if you simply sat and noticed things for 5 minutes per day, how much more detail you could incorporate, how much more authentic you could make it.
So, it doesn’t matter what you’re writing – combining writing and mindfulness still works – but what’s the point? Well, I believe it enables you to see the world with ‘writer’s eyes’ (again forgive the visual bias) and, therefore, to create what Viktor Shklovsky called ‘defamiliarisation’ – that is you can ‘make the world new’ for your reader.
Here’s what you need:
When I say ‘observe the world around you’ this works best when it’s done locally. You could literally be observing your home or the space immediately outside it, whether that’s a garden, front step, backyard or balcony, or you could be observing your locality by going out for a walk or watching the world through your window. So: what are you waiting for? Let me know how you get on.
More soon. Until then, happy writing,
Louise xx