MORE WRITING SECRETS

Is there an idea, feeling, experience, or story welling up to be expressed? Do you have a book in you? Would you like to enter into the wild and wonderful world of writing and leave your touch on others?

Then explore the adventure and pleasure of writing. There is a structure to writing, to prolific writing, and to masterful writing and with NLP and Neuro-Semantics we have the tools for discovering it and making it ours. In the last post I overviewed the key Strategy and Stages in writing. This fits the basic principle in NLP that there’s a structure to every experience. If the activity of writing has a structure, that strategy involves including some of the critical states and belief frames necessary. What I wrote about last week in Neurons was the five stages of writing.

1) Getting an Idea: Brainstorming and Creativity.

2) Free-writing: Getting the idea down on paper.

3) Revision: Straightening out the idea, Drafting.

4) Cleaning-up: Proof-seeing.

5) Selling the Idea and Book: Finding a publisher.

The next question that I’m constantly asked is how have I been so prolific in writing and what does a person need to do to become more prolific? The following is what I wrote many years ago in Anchor Point.

1) Spend Quality Time with your Idea First, I have found that in the first stage of romancing an idea, it is the depth and quality of the time alone with the idea that provides the richness of thought for the writing. This is where the focus or “genius” state becomes so important. When we “access our personal genius” state and sequence things so that we can easily and elegantly step into a focus state at will, we can then be all there with all of our resources available. This is being in the zone. This is accessing the state of flow. And when you do, the world goes away, time goes away, even self goes away—and you experience the fully engagement of the object of your attention.

As I write these days, I step into my “genius” writing state to be fully present with whatever is capturing my attention. When I do, the writing just flows. On the occasions when it doesn’t, I access another “genius” state—that of romancing the idea. I go back to the pre-writing stage where I give myself permission to explore, reflect, study, research, talk, and interview in order to have more depth and quality with the idea that I want to give birth to.

What then happens is pretty magical. With the experience of being with one idea for a long period of time comes a depth and richness of awareness, emotion, understanding, etc. And out of that comes a multitude of new connections, ideas, and creativity. That’s why I read one book at a time,

I read it from cover to cover, and if it’s a high quality book, I’ll meta-read it the second time (that is, I read it for structural and process information). Further (and this will disappoint many people) I read in one field at a time and one book at a time. This may lasts from two months to 18 months. This generally leads to a training manual, one or two books, and dozens of articles. I mine it for all it’s worth!

2) Read One Book at a Time To be a writer, and especially a prolific writer, you have to read. Reading is the pool we bath in every day, it is the spring we drink from, it is the hot springs we relax in. Reading keeps us fresh and alive. Reading feeds our thoughts as we live with the idea.

I read one book at a time in order to be more efficient and prolific. In doing so, I then don’t contaminate what I’m reading with ideas and stories from other books and then can’t remember where I was reading something. I read one book at a time because I want to know the thinking, reasoning, and feeling of the author and want to understand his or her perspective honestly. Reading one book at a time gives me that kind of clarity as it supports comprehension and remembering where I read something, which of course then helps with documentation.

3) Learn to do Mental Writing Efficiency relates also to working through the stages of writing, being disciplined, keeping oneself in the best of states, staying balanced in mind-and-body, staying aligned with one’s visions and values, living ecologically in terms of health, relationships, fun, etc. I “write” a lot when I’m out on a run or when I hike to the top of some of the Colorado mountains. I “write” them in my mind. Often, I have returned from a four-mile run and immediately sit down at the computer and zap out a four or five page article in less than an hour.

4) Discipline your Writing for Efficiency Part of the efficiency that leads to being prolific is the discipline of writing every day. Even when I’m involved in intensive all-day trainings, I will still write for at least 30 minutes. Even when I’m writing posts for egroups (we have four primary egroups in Neuro-Semantics) , I usually keep and file for later use or reference. Similar to my commitment to run three to four miles everyday, I write for at least an hour almost everyday. Robert Dilts does this also as he writes every morning for an hour.

5) Set a Great Big Why for Writing If you want to be prolific, then develop a great big reason to write. I have many. I write to learn. It’s part of my learning strategy. My belief frame is that if I can put something into my words, then it’s mine; I know it. And that will help me to remember it and to integrate it. I write to develop more clarity and succinctness in my communications and trainings. I write to influence others. I write to create products that will continue that influence beyond where I can go in person and beyond the years of my own lifespan. I write to create a positive legacy of NLP and Neuro-Semantics. I write because it’s fun and because almost on a daily basis I discover new things as I write.

I also write because I believe that I can and will write a best seller for the New York list of best sellers. I have every intention of achieving that. I also have every intention of becoming five percent

better and more skilled as a writer with every year and have set up a development plan to facilitate that. What is my goal in doing that? To put NLP and Neuro-Semantics on the map!

For being efficient and prolific, I schedule my writing. I will write three books this year (2004), I have three planned for 2005 already, and at this moment, one scheduled for 2006. In addition to that I have a schedule for writing a dozen or two articles this year. A writing schedule simply keeps me focused and on target. Oh yes, it took me four hours to write and proof this article.