Mature Writing Advice

/ Tracy Abell

Paging through WRITING IN FLOW by Susan K. Perry, Ph.D., I came across a passage from author Tom Robbins that I’d highlighted (with an ! in the margin) during an earlier reading.  I’m going to share it here not because it’s a practice I share (really!  truly!) but because the whole thing makes me laugh:
 

        “You should spend thirty minutes a day looking at dirty pictures.  Or thinking about sex.  The purpose of this is to get yourself sexually excited, which builds tremendous amounts of energy, and then carry that into your work….Keep yourself in, not necessarily a frenzied state, but in a state of great intensity….You should always write with an erection. Even if you’re a woman.”

Having read his books, this advice shouldn’t surprise me.  In fact, it explains an awful lot about how Sissy Hankshaw came to be. 

And I’m thinking there might be other fun advice out there in LJ-Land on losing yourself so completely in your writing that you enter some altered state in which time disappears and you’re tapping into the creative core of the universe.  

Anyone want to share?
           

                 

21 thoughts on “Mature Writing Advice”

  1. Sheesh, that is rather…extreme? I’ve always thought being in the total “zone” when I’m writing is sort of like having a sexual experience and a religious one at once–my heart races, my limbs buzz with energy, I sweat, I feel a dizzying physical excitement rather like first love, but at the same time I feel a connection to some other, higher force in the universe.
    I don’t really know how to get there on purpose, though. It just happens sometimes, like magic, and the rest of the time I’m just plugging along, content but not so downright intense.

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    • >>my heart races, my limbs buzz with energy, I sweat, I feel a dizzying physical excitement rather like first love<<
      “I’ll have what she’s having,” says Jennifer to the waitress.

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    • Wow, Jackie. I’m impressed. I don’t think I’ve felt anything like that while writing. It certainly sounds intense but in a good way. As for plugging along, content, that also sounds like a good approach. Slow and steady and all that…..

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  2. Sheesh, that is rather…extreme? I’ve always thought being in the total “zone” when I’m writing is sort of like having a sexual experience and a religious one at once–my heart races, my limbs buzz with energy, I sweat, I feel a dizzying physical excitement rather like first love, but at the same time I feel a connection to some other, higher force in the universe.

    I don’t really know how to get there on purpose, though. It just happens sometimes, like magic, and the rest of the time I’m just plugging along, content but not so downright intense.

    Like

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