These are my Rough Notes from Becoming a Writer by Dorothea Brande combined with ideas I’ve picked up elsewhere.
(Note that his post is UNEDITED. This is a quick refresher for someone who has already read the book. It can be also useful for someone who wants to skim some ideas from the book or see related concepts.)
While she focuses on writers, a lot of her techniques can be applied by anyone who seeks to do creativity on demand.
She has a lot of techniques that seem silly when explained, but have a big effect when applied. I’ve heard a lot of her ideas being repeated in disjointed fragments by different creative teachers but Dorothea Brande (let’s use DB as a shortcut) synthesized them into a handbook an amateur needs to turn pro.
(If you’ve read Turning Pro and the War of Art by Steven Pressfield, this is the missing manual on how exactly an amateur can turn pro. The best part: it doesn’t have to be bloody! If you’ve wondered why some artists can ‘take dictation from God’ and not have to suffer so much to be creative, this is the right manual. Note that you do need to stretch yourself, but it’s not what you think.)
Those marked with a 0 and a letter (ex. 0A) are theory (episteme). Those marked with numbers (ex. 8) have exercises that will help you build skills/intuition/expertise/craft (techne).
0A) Slough of Despond – most writers seek to become professionals and are told “Genius cannot be taught.” They come to the profession having good taste but not the technical excellence to master it. They mistakenly believe they need to master technical crafts first.
The four difficulties:
1. the difficulty of writing at all
2. the one book author
3. the occasional writer (example, writing only 1 page a year, waits for inspiration)
4. the uneven writer
These four lack some foundation skills that come before the need to practice technical writing craft. The modern term ‘emotional self-regulation’ doesn’t even capture half of it.
1) The object on a string dangling over a circle – to demonstrate that the unconscious can do the work for you with minimal effort (seems banal, but important for everything that follows). Following the circle with your mind, has the object on the string automatically following the path of the circle. Using imagination, your muscles make micromovements to follow
Read her book for the specific instructions.
0B) The self as dual: To be able to work with your inner selves, separate them into the unconscious (Heart, intuition, child-like & emotional but the animal root of strength) and the conscious (Brain, prosaic self, practical, the small human rider atop the tiger/elephant/dragon).
2) Morning pages – writing pages of freewriting (before you have read or talked to anyone) – links the power of the unconscious (Heart) to your writing arm/s. Heart gets to exercise and feel heard. Suspend Brain, we will need conscious prosaic self later. Morning pages are so foundational that Julia Cameron repeats it as a main tool for teaching creativity.
0C) [Not in DB, but just as crucial.] Note that since unconscious does a lot of the working/playing in creative work, we sometimes need to refill it’s ‘well’ of images and experiences. That’s why the creative teacher Julia Cameron recommends Artist Dates. That’s why traveling can renew someone’s zest for life. The unconscious uses everything from your whole life – that’s why feeding your mental garden with nutritious books on strategy (Robert Greene), philosophy (Daily Stoic), or getting metaphors and mental representations from other fields like history or science is useful.
3) Writing by prearrangement – set a schedule to write (for example at 4pm everyday for a month) – trains you to summon creativity on demand to an arbitrary time of your choosing
4) The First survey – Do a survey of your morning pages, determine own strengths – use Brain for this task
5) On Imitation – Based on Brain’s output in 4, also determine which technical excellences you need to practice. Imitate the technical excellences of other pro artists, but not their beliefs and world views. You need this to nurture your own techne. Episteme is only the introduction/theory/knowledge, techne/craft is when you are able to apply. Technique comes from the word techne.
0D) The root of originality is origin. Given the same writing prompts, 20 different writers will have 20 different takes. Because their beliefs, world views, and life circumstances are different. No need to try so hard to be creative or original, recall 0).
6) 11 Exercises from different spiritual traditions to increase mental/physical/emotional/social foundations. Like how an athlete or martial artist needs to train daily, so does the pro creative. Healthy body, healthy mind. A few minutes a day leads to consistent progress.
7) The Practice Story
8) R&R – No to busman’s holidays. Most writers are avid readers, but to last as a pro writer, know that it’s difficult for your brain to rest when surrounded by words.
Real recreation is doing something that is completely different from your work. For writers, this means doing wordless physical activity. Music without words. Visual things without words. Going for a run without words.
This sounds trite, but it’s actually the foundation of genius later on. When deprived of words externally, writers tend to find their own words bursting out of them internally.
0E) Genius – there is a third self. Learn to use it. Genius is not a fixed thing gifted to the select few but something in all of us that we can tap into. It’s like a higher imagination, an open channel to God, the synergy of Heart & Brain, something deeper and more powerful than conscious self can strain to do alone. It goes by many names but it’s powers can be used. Those we call “geniuses” just tap into this more often than others. They may even have a routine of habits that enable it.
9) There is one condition where genius often appears – do a rhythmic, monotonous, silent activity. Most pro writers have something like this – for some it’s scrubbing floors, for others tidying their house, for some going on a jog. The habits of writers/creatives can be so idiosyncratic that it hides their commonality – rhythmic, monotonous, silent activity. This sounds a lot like scatterfocus or giving ideas time to ‘perk.’
0F) Why does 8 work? If Genius in 0E sounds too amazing to be possible, substitute it with the variable X. X is to Mind what Mind is to Body. Say what? Think of it like an algebraic equation X : Mind :: Mind : Body.
When the body is still (or doing a rhythmic monotonous activity like jogging), the mind can work better. When the mind is still, X can do it’s job.
In DB’s time, meditation wasn’t all the rage like it is today. To understand what DB and I are saying, try to think of nothing. If you haven’t meditated before, you’ll find your mind chatters like a monkey.
That’s why in meditation, they recommend you focus on your breathing. Alternatively, you can focus on a dull object (preferably not shiny) and rest your mind there. The more your mind rests on what you’re focusing on, uou’ll find you’ll hear whispers of insights from unconscious and genius.
10) The story idea as object (or point of meditative focus) – This is the real magic. Now instead of the dull object or breathing, hold a story idea or character in mind as the point to rest your mind on. You’ll see genius or X get to work and bring the character to life. Without even trying, characters that were like soulless puppets start moving and having a life of their own. Plot points you were stuck in resolve themselves.
One way is to pick a start point and an end point. Make reaching the end point as effortless as exercise 1. Genius can even write a story fully formed in your mind so long as you ‘rest’ it on the idea long enough.
This putting an ‘idea as a point of meditative focus’ can be used to summon creative powers on anything from business problems to thorny relationship problems.
DB has suggestions for how to escalate these exercises in her book.
0G) In The Art of Learning: An Inner Journey to Optimal Performance by Josh Waitzkin, he recommends doing exercises to summon these creative moments more frequently. It’s easy to get these flashes of insight right after waking up or before bed. The technique is to get more and more of them several times throughout the day. Like Becoming a Writer, Josh’s book is full of tactics and strategies for the road to mastery.
There it is, Becoming a Writer by Dorothea Brande plus a few related ideas. What DB teaches is less about writing/creative craft than it is about a guide to your own brain and inner self. In 1934, she wrote it decades before brain research was a thing, her practical pointers are grounded in experience.
I’m believing more and more that techne can’t be taught or explained to you, you can only experience it for yourself to understand. The closest thing that an author can do for you is tell stories, because stories are the closest thing to ‘experiencing it for yourself.’ Try the exercises for yourself, you might be surprised at what you’re capable of.
Idea Wanderer 