I've been doing some thinking about
thinking.
Miles
of column space and endless vocal-cord waggery are regularly devoted to the
actual craft of writing. All that 'sitting down, tapping at keys' stuff.
Comparatively
little is ever said about the sheer volume of thought which must take place
before that writing begins. Thinking time is vital for the writer and yet
rarely gets discussed. It's as if brilliant ideas only spring up through
the act of writing itself.
I love
the fact that we're now bombarded by more information, social media,
entertainment and downright choice than ever before. Anyone
claiming to be bored these days frankly must have something wrong with them.
Our inboxes, RSS feeds, Twitter columns and general environments are
endless sources of brain stimulation. We get to do and experience way
more than previous generations. It's easy to take it for granted that,
for instance, we now have written conversations with people over the course of
minutes via e-methods as opposed to weeks via snail-mail. Everything is
increasingly compressed and we're increasingly impatient. However, these
developments also threaten our opportunities to relax and think about nothing.
Oh, sweet, precious nothing.
Wander
down the street, attempting to dream your little dreamy dreams, and see how
quickly your train of thought gets hijacked by any number of things and people.
See how easily your eye gets diverted by, say, one of those flashy
animated adverts at bus stops, or on the Tube. There may be
clipboard-Nazis, flyer people or rain. In places like gym changing rooms,
or even steam rooms, where you might reasonably hope to switch your brain to
neutral and see what it naturally serves up, there's often that socially inappropriate
character who wants a conversation. Annoying reminders of everyday chores
might pop up to plague you. And even if none of those things happen,
someone's bound to text or call that magical metal rectangle in your pocket.
Unless
we're careful, our brains may never get a chance to work from a blank slate.
If our minds are whiteboards, they spend a great deal of time every day
being scrawled on by other people. The subconscious mind tends to be good
at solving problems, and occasionally at creating new ideas, even while we're
asleep, yet it's important to force the issue and make time to think. Actually
schedule it. Prioritize it. Confiscate everyone else's marker pens,
grab a yellow duster and scrub that mental whiteboard clean. Embrace the
blankness.
If
we're thinking alone, even while defacing our non-metaphorical whiteboard
and/or notepad, we need to overcome the nagging feeling that we're not doing real
work. Of course we are. Ideas are king. Sure, the
execution arguably matters most - which is part of the reason why you can't
copyright an idea, only its realisation - but without that genius concept in
the first place, there's no seed to nurture into a delightful bloom. A
great idea should never be underestimated because it came to you in the space
of ten seconds. Probably best for us writers to drop all thoughts of
being paid by the hour.
So
we must ignore those nagging feelings, which undervalue what we're doing.
Because Christ only knows, hardly anyone else is going to understand this
'sitting around thinking' business. To other people, a writer sitting
around thinking - especially if he or she happens to be in a pub - is a
work-shy daydreamer, who has been irritatingly successful in finding an excuse
to do nothing. It just looks like a person lounging around doing sod all
while others demonstrably toil with the aid of corporeal items like heavy
machinery or spreadsheets. Others probably imagine us sitting there with
Homer Simpson-esque thought bubbles suspended above our heads, in which
skeletal cows merrily play fiddles.
While
some people genuinely don't understand writers' thinking-sessions, I'll wager
that others understand only too well. And they may envy us. We get
to sit in cafes, libraries or pub beer gardens for hours on end - ideally not
drinking booze, admittedly, unless you're one of those characters who works
best with a loosened brain - and come up with notions while using
nothing for reference except The Stuff In Our Brains. Along the way, when
we settle on a project, sure, we'll do a little research, or maybe even a great
deal. But we get to sit there, creating stuff from scratch as our neurons
pinwheel about - an action which is entirely invisible.
No
wonder writing tends to be such a solitary occupation: all that thinking
naturally makes it an internalised task, even before we glue ourselves to a
desk-chair and do the actual writing (just then, instead of "the actual
writing", I very nearly wrote "the real hard graft of writing".
Proves how easy it is to forget just how much heavy-lifting is done by
the brain alone, even when you're writing a blogpost about it). Right
there at the start of the process, it's just us: our minds, our notepads, our
Post-It notes on the wall, our whiteboards, our Evernote accounts, our text
documents entitled Loose Ideas. It's initially all very personal and
shielded from the outside world - a world which we must then work out how best
to excite with our big ideas.
It's
not for nothing that the once Doctor Who show runner Steven Moffat prefered not
to tell anyone about his ideas until he wrote them - the reactions of others,
even if it's a qualified enthusiasm, can blow some of the magic dust away.
"It's so important," he said in an interview for Doctor Who
Magazine in 2008, "the magic of Not Telling Anyone Yet. I know
Russell [T Davies] thinks that way too – he won’t tell anybody what he’s doing.
Because it turns to ashes in your mouth. It almost becomes ordinary.”
"The
sheer amount of thinking you have to do, to make this work!" he
exclaimed. "When I read scripts that are bad, it’s often because
they’re just lazy. The writer hasn’t thought things through in the way that I
would. There was a quote from John Cleese, around the time he was ruling the
world with Fawlty Towers: 'If I’m any good at writing comedy, it’s because I
know how hard it’s supposed to be.' And that’s it. It’s shockingly difficult
and emotionally upsetting!”
Need
further proof of how well the brain responds when temporarily removed from
external interference? Go on holiday and force yourself to think about
very little. See how those new story ideas gather like moths to a flame.
So
modern life's intensity is a thing of wonder, but also threatens to erode those
special times when we get to rejoice in stirring that big, utterly unique
cauldron inside our heads. Fight for your time to think, without the
slightest hint of shame. Book yourself a whole string of psychological
working holidays
