Doing without Doing

Students always ask about procrastination and writer’s block. Some feel laziness set  in.  What happens in the writer’s mind to prevent the word flow? Most of the time it centers around frustration and fear. The product appears more important than getting there. All of a sudden nothing happens. Anxiety takes over.

In Taoist literature a concept exists called wei wu wei. It translates “doing without doing.” With writing a conscious need to achieve presents at every moment. It often interrupts the process. When one relents and flows into the doing the anxiety clears and a deeper wisdom takes over. The mind and body create together without the angst about outcome.

How do we get there? Spend time watching bees or hummingbirds. They move from flower to flower. There’s no finish line, just doing and gathering.

Writers need a form of exercise to release frustration and train the mind, spirit and body. Runners, bicyclists or those who practice yoga, understand the “flow” that occurs when mind and body dissolve into movement. One step at a time, one pose into another, one revolution of the pedals and process takes over. The breath assists to create a rhythm and the brain releases chemicals to drown the frustration and fear.

How do you translate this to writing?

Regardless of your mood, pick up the pen or tap the keys. Explore your relationship to writing. Discover what to say while writing to say it. The mental uncertainties will clear and you will move deeper into the experience. Suspense energizes and will reveal meaning.

Create Write: What troubles you the most about writing? Spend time in exercise, then return to the paper or keyboard. Write for 15 minutes without stopping. Suspend judgments and feel the freedom.

Teasing Daisies

Daisies tease beyond the chainlink.




Where is the poem?

Become a puppeteer and dangle observations on nature’s stage, eavesdrop on human nature and add emotion. Search for surprises and how the man-made world and nature co-exist or conflict. A reciprocity develops in personal ideas and philosophy danced upon the outside world and then pulled back inside.

If it’s hiding
search for it
in a spider’s dream
or web of twilight.

You might find one
in lemony shadows
that attach to ladybugs

Consider it
in the moon’s crackle
blinking past pines.

Discover moments
before stars sprinkle
dusk with a promise

of what we most need.

Where does a poem come from? It glistens at the crossroads of preparation and possibility, muscled from writing practice to the moment observed.

Creative Write: Today search for a poem. You may need to dig in your garden and look under a few rocks.

Beyond Abstractions

Kahlil Gibran wrote, “Your soul is often a battlefield upon which your reason and your judgment wage war against your passion and your appetite.”




This example reveals an opportunity the writer did not take. When Gibran began his notion of the soul, he used the metaphor of a battlefield and then explained about waging war inserting four abstractions. He could have defined each further by example.

We may connect with his reasoning but still need details and realistic pictures in words to understand his meaning of reason, judgment, passion and appetite.

As writers we need to communicate to the reader our point of view through metaphor, imagery and details. Because we come from a variety of backgrounds and experiences, the above words create different reactions. We need to show examples of complex emotions to give the reader a clue to our intentions.

One person’s reason might become another’s wrong. Judgment becomes another issue. Who’s the judge? Passion and appetite have potential for images also.

Creative Write:  What does reason look like? How could you show it in action? See where you can take these four abstractions, either together or separately.