Writerhead

So, with baby steps I am trying to get back into a writing routine.  There are many reasons for my recent fiction slowdown including some stressful things going on in my personal life and some diversion of my time and energy into other projects.  I'm hoping that as some of these worries and projects become more manageable I can get more into a writing routine again.

As I've talked about before on this blog, however, I don't pressure myself and beat myself up if I'm not writing or blogging regularly.  Burnout is not a fun thing to experience and I can't afford to burn myself out on writing when I have a family to care for.  They are my number one priority.  But I do find that writing makes me happy and if I can do it regularly – even just a little bit at a time – then, as Martha Stewart would say, "It's a good thing."

Writerhead, to me, is that state of mind when your mind is continuously chewing on a story – you're exploring possible plotlines in your mind and are anxiously awaiting the next time you can sit at your computer or with your notebook to get some words down.  I first heard the term from Kristin Bair O'Keeffe and it's one of the themes of her newly-launched website.   When you are in writerhead, writing may not be your number one priority but it's certainly in the top five.

There are some things that will definitely kick me out of my writer's head:

Sleep deprivation. When I am sleep deprived (my kids often go through difficult sleep phases), my brain eventually goes into slow motion mode and I have to address only critical tasks.  My interests and passions are put to the side until the phase is over.
Stress, worry and anxiety. When my mind is preoccupied or worse – when I am suffering from anxiety – writing is mostly impossible.  At times, I've been able to draft some dark pieces during these phases, but mostly the words just don't come.
Busy, out of control days. I often try to write in the evening.  When our days are over-scheduled and hectic, however, by the time evening comes all I want to do is have dinner and vegetate in front of American Idol.

These are all different than writer's block, per se.  Somewhere deep in my brain there are probably the seeds of either some new fiction or a continuation of my WIP's but it's my physical body that tends to shut out the writing process.  Writerhead is impossible for me to achieve in these circumstances.

So the first thing I need to do in order to build a regular writing routine is to get a handle on the three areas outlined above.  Those are essentially the prerequisites.  But then, I've learned there are some things that I can do do to allow those germs of ideas to assert themselves.

Morning pages. Whenever I have been able to regularly do morning pages – a la Julia Cameron – I have found that the writing ideas flow much more easily.  I use the site 750 words.  Sometimes I explore actual stories but more often than not, I just dump my stresses and worries on the page and it frees up my mind for more enlightened thinking.
Allow my mind to wander. I suppose this can be viewed as daydreaming or maybe facilitated daydreaming when I check out art websites, history books or other resources that trigger random thinking and associations.
Be observant. When I begin to watch the people around me all sorts of stories come to mind.  This is a great source of inspiration.

So, these are the main inspiration blocks and inspiration enablers for me … how about you?  What makes you stuck or gets you unstuck?  Please share so that we can help each other along in staying in our writerhead.