By Elizabeth Fletcher
I have a confession: I hate sitting down to write.
When I overcome that not-so-small hurdle and begin the work of translating the images and voices in my head, wrestling words into sentences and then rearranging sentences until they fuse into something complete, I step out of my own way and find fun. For as much as I loathe sitting down to write, there’s an ecstatic high to having written , to losing a sense of a self and being surprised along the way.
To understand my ongoing resistance, I read neuroscientist Jill-Bolte Taylor’s Whole Brain Living: The Anatomy of Choice and the Four Characters That Drive Our Life . Early in the book, she writes that the emotional part of our left brain is designed to protect us from things that have hurt us in the past.
Oh. Hello, messy first drafts. Hello, story or essay by another writer that is more dazzling than anything I believe myself capable of writing. Hello, workshops where participants use feedback as petty revenge. Hello, shadow side that I’m embarrassed to put into words. Hello, fear of rejection.
No wonder why I felt resistance—part of my brain, while it meant well, was keeping me from doing the very thing that helps me feel whole.
Bolte-Taylor breaks down the voices in our head into four quadrants, or characters, that represent four distinct groupings of brain cells:
Left pre-front cortex / Character 1: The language-bearer, giving you your unique voice as a writer. The linear thinker who assigns a beginning, a middle, and an end. They are the brain librarian who will offer logic to help you finish a piece. They also remember your writing files that never went anywhere, trying to steer you back to formulas that have worked in the past. They take in other writer’s words and whisper, “You’ll never be that good.” If they can be softened, they relish the puzzle of writing. They’re a helluva line editor.
Left limbic system / Character 2: The vulnerable, jumpy scaredy-cat doing everything in their power to protect you from being wounded. As reactive as a toddler, ready to take you into fight, flight or freeze, they need to be soothed to sleep so writing can happen.
Right limbic system / Character 3: Hanging out in the present moment, curious and empathetic, they crave novelty. With no memory of past hurts around writing, they’re a risk-taker, loving the playful mess of the first draft. They hold the key to flow state, to the heady joy of having written.
Right pre-frontal cortex / Character 4: Connected to something bigger than yourself, this part allows you to channel material and metaphors that surprise. They are the mystery and the magic of boundlessness—allowing you to disrobe from your body, from time, from the separation of self and the universe.
We all contain these four characters, though in each of us some characters tend to be more dominant than others. Yet Bolte-Taylor affirms, “…we have the power to turn our emotional circuitry on and off by choice.” As a yoga therapist, I regularly work with people to quell hypervigilant nervous systems. Now I needed to attend to my own to overcome resistance.
While staying at a yoga center for training, I started spending my lunch break to attend a free-wheeling movement class that invited people to dance through the seven chakras, or energy centers of the body. The hour-long practice was playful, expressive, intuitive and—get this—structured like a narrative arc, building to a cardiovascular climax and then slowing to denouement. Each day, I noticed how the practice got my creative juices flowing, how I fizzed with ideas and felt no resistance to the blank page.
I ultimately trained in the modality so I could incorporate it into my writing life. I found that fifteen minutes of playful, fluid and freeform movement—with no expectation of a product, where I don’t need to analyze or judge what is being expressed through my body—can pacify the anti-writing parts of my left brain.
Additional studies bolster this connection between movement and creativity. Researchers Michael L. Slepian and Nalini Ambady found that fluid movement enhanced creative generation, flexible thinking, and making remote associations—all traits creative writers need. By embodying the elements, for example, or by using hands, elbows, shoulders, or hips to draw circles in the space around me as though I were a human spirograph, I’m coaxing Characters 3 and 4 into the spotlight, priming my imagination even before I put pen to paper.
No matter how often I remind myself of the ecstasy of having written, resistance shows up time and again. My Character 1 perfectionist dreads the messiness of drafting and revision. My Character 2 pitches a fit, not wanting to face the possibility of another rejection, as though my publication credits were somehow reflective of my worth as a person.
Sometimes I let these left-brain characters lead, instead choosing something writing-adjacent: reading, daydreaming, or journaling without expectation. But I can only do this for so long before the nagging sense creeps in that I’ve honed a new avoidance technique. And so I bow to all the characters inside my head—then turn on some tunes and start dancing.
__________
Elizabeth Fletcher is a writer and yoga therapist from Saint Paul, Minnesota. Her nonfiction has appeared or is forthcoming in The Leaping Clear , Tiferet and Awakenings: Stories of Bodies & Consciousness (ELJ Editions). She is an assistant nonfiction editor for Pithead Chapel. She facilitates an Embodied Writing practice online and offers workshops that bridge movement and writing. Connect with her on the app formerly known as Twitter @esfletcher or on her website .
All Rights Reserved Book Blog