The Art of Not Thinking

In a well known Zen story, a master calligrapher draws the Japanese characters for ‘The First Principle’ 84 times as a critical student looks on. Each time, the student rejects the master’s effort. When the student finally steps outside for a moment, the master hurriedly sketches the phrase, unmindful and free from all distraction.

“A masterpiece,” pronounces the student on his return.

I had a lot of trouble completing my second novel, THE ARX, much more than for the first, ELDORADO, which seemed to flow from my brain so easily. I took to describing the process of writing THE ARX as ‘like having a tooth pulled’.

One of the biggest questions was how to end it. I had a vague idea, but nothing concrete ever seemed to be forthcoming. For many days I fought to solve the problem of the ending – nothing. I’d all but given up and was at a loss what to do.

Finally, I just started writing it. I didn’t know where it was going – I didn’t know what would happen. I didn’t care. I just wrote. To my amazement, the ending came pouring out. Something I’d spent so long failing to work out with my conscious mind spilled out like a bursting dam when I stopped thinking about it.

I experienced something similar in the sequel to the THE ARX, which I’m writing at the moment. I was in the process of writing the ‘back-story’ – a part of the story that is central to the novel but that will never actually make it into the book. I, as the author, have to understand the back-story in order to write the ‘real’ story.

Again, as I wrote, ideas started flowing, ideas that would make it into the novel. And again, they simply popped into my head as a by-product of the physical act of writing.

It truly is magic, and I don’t know why it works. Maybe consciously thinking about something uses a part of the brain that can’t provide what I need to know. Maybe the wiring just works differently as I’m writing, allowing ideas to flow. It’s even possible that my conscious thought did figure it out at some point, but I had to start writing to access the result.

For whatever reason, I highly recommend this practice for anyone stuck on something. Forget about whether what you’re writing is any good, or whether it will ever even make it into the book.

Just write – and see what happens.