Registration for tomorrow’s Starfire Spark closes tonight. The class is Thursday at 8:30 PM Eastern, live on Zoom.
Here is what I’ve learned about writer’s block, from my own and from watching other people’s.
It’s almost never a shortage of ideas. If you have a blank page in front of you and nothing is coming, it isn’t because there’s nothing in you. It’s because you’re in the wrong state of mind to reach it. You’re tight, you’re braced, you’re judging every line before it’s finished, and you’re half out of your chair before you’ve written anything. Writer’s block is a state your body and your mind are in, and states can be changed. That’s the whole premise of this class, and it’s why people who thought they were out of ideas leave with pages written and new tools for conquering the beast.
Tomorrow’s class goes after the version of creative blockage that hits after you’ve already started. You sit down, you get about 11 minutes in, and then you check your phone, get up for water, remember an email, and come back to find the thread is gone. If that’s you, you may have decided you don’t have the attention span for the thing you most want to do. You do. Staying put and getting yourself into the flow state are skills, and they get stronger and stronger with practice under the right conditions.
Here’s how it works. You put on your headphones, and I stream Hemi-Sync audio. If you haven’t heard of Hemi-Sync before, it combines an audio technique called binaural beats, in which you are played a slightly different tone in each ear and your brain reconciles these by producing a third tone which is the difference between the two, with other brainwave altering frequencies and tones layered in, to shift you into a state of synchronization between the hemispheres of your brain. This induces a calm, open, focused state from which you can access expanded awareness. The technology was developed by Robert Monroe and has been studied for more than fifty years.
Tomorrow’s track takes you into Focus 12, which is a state of expanded awareness that can allow you to become more conscious of your inner resources and guidance. This particular track is built to deepen your familiarity with that state, so that once you’re in it, you can stay in it. Before it starts, I will explain how to use Hemi-Sync and what to focus on. While the track plays, you’ll practice noticing the moment your attention starts to drift, and you’ll ease back into the flow without leaving.
Then we do a timed sprint. You set one small goal for your own writing, or whatever you make, I start a timer, and you work on that goal without stopping or deleting anything until the timer rings. You’ll be doing it from a state where staying put is easier than getting up, and you’ll get to feel what a full stretch of uninterrupted work is like when it isn’t a fight.
You walk away with two things. The first is whatever you made during the sprint, which will be further along than it usually gets in one sitting. The second is the skill you practiced while the track played… noticing when you start to drift and easing back into the flow. That one comes home with you, and you can use it every time you sit down to work from now on.
You need stereo headphones, a quiet room, and whatever supplies you use to create. You can come to any Thursday. A session is $22.