Fallow Mind Time

I went camping this weekend. I did not take my computer. The notebook I brought with me was a little 4x6 journal from Japan, and in it I wrote less than a page - all tiny little things to jog my memory.

I packed stuff. Drove windy roads (very windy roads, where I had to be super-careful not to nauseate my poor son). Unpacked stuff. Cooked meals over fire (and on the wood-burning tent cabin stove). Hiked.

And two days in, the answer to a plot problem just bloomed in my head like a flower. So I wrote a couple of notes down, and then left it alone again until I got a chance to talk to a writer friend, whereupon I talked out what I'd figured out, and then left it alone again.

Boy, am I keen to write today.

The funny thing is, for the last week I'd been pushing myself, up against two intractable story problems I couldn't get past. I was coming at them from every angle when what I really needed was to leave myself alone for a bit.

I think every writer should go out and look for a good fallow mind activity, if they don't have one already. A fallow mind activity IS NOT surfing the web or going on Facebook or engaging in normal daily routine. For me, at least, those things fill my mind instead of emptying it. They're a distraction and not a help. A fallow mind activity is something that requires you to concentrate on something different, hard enough that other distracting concerns fall away. These are a few of mine:

hiking
difficult driving
camping
playing piano
rock climbing
dancing to strong music

I wish I could climb rocks more, in fact, because I found the activity so mentally absorbing that I couldn't think about anything else while I was doing it. I find activities like these push away distraction and allow my subconscious to work on my stories by itself - with remarkable results. I encourage other writers to seek out similar activities, because you might really like what happens next.