Writing and Mindfulness, #reverb10

I forgot to include December 1st's prompt for my first blog post of #reverb10.   But here is the prompt for Day 2/December 2nd:


"What do you do each day that doesn't contribute to your writing -and can you eliminate it?" (Author: Leo Babauta)

As I suspect it will be for many people, this was a really hard question for me to answer.  Damn you, #reverb10, for throwing a curve ball so early!  As punishment, this is going to be more of a process post, and less reflective.

When I began to ruminate on this question, I realized it was very difficult for me to come up with something I did daily that interfered with my writing.  But I had absolutely no problem thinking of all the things I don't do every day, all the mind loops and stall tactics that I use to excuse the quality of my writing, or not writing at all.  These are some of the things I thought of, when I tried to think of something I did daily:

• I don't focus enough on my formal, non-blog writing, which harms my development as a writer, and therefore the quality of my blog.  
• I don't set aside a time, or set a timer at some point during the day, to just bang out whatever comes into my head.  I know this is a good exercise if I want to get serious about writing, but I never seem to just start doing it.
• I never write down ideas when they pop into my head, even just a few words on the back of an envelope. By the time I sit down later, the ideas are lost.  
• I haven't sought an outlet for my writing.  I am one of those people who needs a deadline to really get anything polished.  I can't bring myself to complete anything I start, without that line in the sand.  

I have so many half written short stories, articles, and yes, even ideas for a novel, all tucked away in a large wooden keepsake box.  It also holds reprints of the very few things I have actually published, as talismans.  As if the fact of their completion will magically rub off, or positively influence my enormous collection of half-thoughts, and stories ending mid-paragraph.

By the same token, I never pull anything out of the big wooden keepsake box to revise or rethink, or insert into other, longer, writings.  It is like that wooden box is a coffin for my writing.  A coffin stuffed with notebooks, half used; journals with bi-annual posts; copies of legal briefs; and the few articles I have published.  I should be pulling them out, dissecting them, and cannibalizing them for new, and hopefully better, pieces.  It is as if they were lost to the mists of time.

That my approach to this prompt was immediately negative is not surprising to me.  I have a very negative approach to my entire life, I am pensive, intense, and not a very sweet person.  This makes my writing seem very self-indulgent, and inward looking, or at least that is how it reads to me.   Part of what concerns me is that my writing is always memoir-ish, but makes no real attempt to make my experiences seem universal.

How do I turn myself around?  How do I start to feel positive about what I write, and have written?   How do I take my intensity and self-indulgence, and use it to write, instead of angrily ruminate?

One therapy to which I have been subjected is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT).  I didn't really enjoy it, or the other people in my group. I was enrolled in the sessions as part of my course of treatment for bipolar illness, although it has since been found that CBT is of zero benefit to those who are bipolar.  Nonetheless, it was helpful for anxiety, and to some extent, compulsive behaviors.  But the most important thing I learned about was the quasi-Buddhist theory of mindfulness.

In my life, being mindful means living in the now, and listening to my thoughts, and what questions they raise.  It is about finding the patterns of flawed and negative thinking, and being able to say: "I see I am beginning to follow my old negative thought pattern.  I need to change my orientation."  It is hard to do at first.  No, I take that back, it is always hard to do.  Mindfulness requires a lot of work, and it forces self-knowledge, whether you want it or not.

I am hoping this year to begin to obliterate the negative thought loops that hold me back from writing.  My only weapon may be mindfulness.  But it is a strong one.