Writers, creatives, artists, will experience (hopefully) every once in a while, what I’d like to call a writing attack. Jack Kerouac calls for writing ‘without consciousness in semi-trance’ and Yeats calls it ‘trance writing.’ Mihály Csíkszentmihályi calls it flow, a mental state of single-minded immersion. Other people call it getting in the zone.

I tend to enjoy direct references to physical violence (Karate anyone?) and some nicknames I have from friends include Knives and Switchblade, amongst other choice names. I swear I’m not a violent person by nature but we’ll leave that up to the other person to decide, shall we?

Hence how my writing ‘attacks’ me, without notice, without apology, and hopefully, without fail.

The first time I was quite aware of a writing attack as an adult was fairly recently, in March 2011 in Kep, Cambodia. It was 2 in the morning and I was sharing a room at the guesthouse with one of my travel buddies. She didn’t bring her Mac, nor did I. But our other travel friend did, and he was in a room two doors down.

Nothing could stop me and I mean nothing. The writing attack took over me completely, I was helpless in its dominance and I couldn’t write fast enough in my Moleskine to get all my thoughts down. My hand started cramping after an hour and my mind was not yet finished with me. Next best option: borrow his laptop!

So I knocked on his door, abruptly woke him up, and asked if I could use his laptop. After saying yes (because I already let myself in the room), I apologized profusely while simultaneously proceeding to then let my fingers fly across the keyboard for the next 3 hours. It was absolute insanity and I loved every minute of it.

I experience now much more frequently these writing attacks and they oftentimes occur in the evening, many times in the wee hours of the morning.

This is how I write during a writing attack. Perhaps it will help you as well whenever you have one of yours or possibly even induce one.

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Writing Attacks, Trance Writing and the State of Semi-Consciousness

1. Scribble the idea or pressing thought as quickly as possible.

Try to do acrobatics with your fingers on the paper or keyboard. I call it writing gymnastics.

Flip, dive, spin, do the splits, cartwheel all around, inside, outside, upside, downside, around and around, twirl your fingers in a delicious and affectionate promenade, caressing the paper or keyboard like it’s the last lover you shall ever have.

Wrap yourself in this lovely and intimate moment. This is the most beautiful moment you and your art can ever experience.

2. Nonstop capture.

Claude Monet (1840-1926), the leading figure of the Impressionist Movement, once said, “I have been painting nonstop so I can capture as much as possible before my world goes completely dark.”

I experienced the Monet Garden exhibit at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum in May and I felt Monet’s nonstop fury. I felt his endless dance, with his swirling colors, paintbrush dipped into buckets of vivid yet soft liquid expressions and layered upon the blank, empty canvas in front of him. I felt his dire urgency and I understood this feeling no rational or practical mind could ever explain or even attempt to. Some things are never meant to be explained. Some things are meant to be felt.

This is how I write.

I write nonstop, all hours of the day, to capture as much as possible the exotic, brilliant, extreme, deep, broken thoughts of mine that even without being published, needs to be written down in a self-expressive therapeutic act of explosive mind scavenging.

You don’t have to write like I do, paint like Monet did, dance like Plisetskaya did. But try it sometime. The nonstop furious capture. It’s insane and may just catapult your art into realms unknown before.

3. Express your times. You are the World.

Russian poet Robert Rozhdestvensky wrote regarding writers, “A writer, whether he wants to or not, always expresses his times, with which he is bound up indissolubly. There is no getting rid of the world; it is always with us.”

The soul, mind and heart are the most precious things a person can ever have. Within you are worlds unexplored, untraveled, undiscovered. But they are waiting. And they are ready.

Yearn to write beyond what you physically see with your eyes. Write, write, write!

Jiddu Krishnamurti, Indian philosopher, writes, “You are the World.” Don’t apologize for your writing.

And like Danielle LaPorte said on June 4 at the World Domination Summit in Portland, Oregon, “Stop rounding out your edges.” You are in this generation, living, breathing, laughing, crying, smiling, growing, dying, for a reason. Embrace your generation, embrace this time, this moment, embrace your world.

4. Scare yourself to death.

When you scare yourself shitless, you are pushed not just to the Edge, but way, way over it.

You may not like the feeling at first, but your art needs it. YOU need it.

Push yourself over the Edge, fall forward, backward, sideways, upside down, right side up. Spinning. Screaming. Flailing. No shame. Accept loss forever.

Remember, you don’t always have to publish everything you write, everything you create. Your art needs no apology and no reason to exist except for the sheer pleasure of it all.

You don’t need a reason. You just simply be. Simply feel. Simply create.

5. Mesmerizing uncertainty.

Pick the sun-sweet berries of the Earth, feel the vast, heavenly warm rays of sunshine, paint the raw colors upon your soul, dive deep into the heart of what matters, sing with the voices of the steady river streams, fly with the uncontrollable and invisible wind, the soft clouds as your closest friends.

Certainty, planning, efficiency. This is good and all but not during your entire existence here in this world.

I love how Wislawa Szymborska, Polish poetess, put it, “Both are convinced that a sudden surge of emotion bound them together. Beautiful is such a certainty, but uncertainty is more beautiful.”

That is why I don’t plan (too far and too much). Not just for my writing, but for my life. I don’t necessarily create outlines, 3-year plans, monthly or quarterly goal-setting sheets. An idea or thought pops into my head, I jot it down quickly, I may ponder and meditate over it for a few days before exploring it further, and then off I go! Believe me, I’m the furthest person from lazy. Never have I worked so hard in my life. Not because I feel obligated to. But because I want to.

My words sing to me, cry out to me, laugh with me, share with me. I see them in my head. They sleep in my mind while at night, and sometimes, they don’t let me sleep at all.

I cannot plan for this to happen and I don’t ever want to.

We think we know more than we actually know. We think we are going to do XYZ during our 2-week travels in Alaska. We think our characters will do XYZ while planning our next novel’s plot and storyline. We think we will get promoted within the next 18 months and plan for it by purchasing a lovely and most expensive and debt-ridden vehicle.

Try not planning for once. Try living in the moment. Try creating in the moment.

The minute your hand stops writing, let it stop. The minute you stop photographing, let it stop. The minute your voice starts fading, let it stop. The minute your foot hits the ground as you land from a faraway place, let it stop.

Be in the moment for once. It’s mesmerizing, this uncertainty.

6. Merge inseparately.

You <--> Your art

Together, merged inseparably, bound together by more than blood, more than a pact, more than life itself, more than sky meets Earth.

If you haven’t felt, seen, heard, experienced your art recently, find it. Find it in yourself. Never let yourself go. Never let your art go.

I let go of my writing for many years while attending university for business school and working corporate jobs. When I started writing again, it was extremely painful. I stared at the blank page, the blank screen in front of me. I wondered how I will ever make it as an independent writer. I felt anxiety in the depths of my heart. I feared that my mind had nothing left to process, my fingers were lifeless, my heart was beaten senseless from self-suffocation and strangulation. I feared I had died.

It can be painful for you too. Know that you are not alone. If you’ve been out of your art for a while, ease back into it, day by day. Don’t beat yourself up. Love yourself. Be diligent, persevere, let the throbbing aches melt away into pleasure, into joy, into peace, into healing, into rejuvenation.

No one is here to judge. Your art needs to exist.

7. Palpable creation.

Feel your creation. When I read your writing, let me feel you. When I see your art, let me feel you. When I speak with you, let me feel you. Look me in the eyes with sincerity and Truth. I want to feel your lovely soul.

It’s unnerving and a true shame when I see supremely talented men and women fall by the wayside because they were unable to bridge the gap between what they felt with their heart, what they saw with their soul, and the art they physically created.

Their manifestations should be them. But sometimes, this is hard to do.

It shouldn’t be, though. Creation is palpable. It’s not impossible.

Splay yourself onto the canvas. If you need to do it literally, do it. I have painter friends who sleep with their paints, brushes, and canvases all around them. Some don’t ever leave their studio. Call it what you will, but so long as they are happy, that is all that matters.

Photographer friends of mine sleep with their cameras, their equipment, their negatives, filmstrips and photographs all around them. They are one with their art and feel most comfortable in this element.

Some writer friends of mine sleep in bookstores, coffeeshops, libraries, surrounding themselves literally with the written word. If you can find me somewhere in this world, which is hard enough as it is, chances are I won’t be too far from one of these places.

8. Magnetizing semi-consciousness and naked purpose.

You don’t need to be fully awake in order to create. Literally and figuratively.

Some of my best writing were created when my thoughts woke me up in the middle of the night, as I grabbed my eyeglasses somewhere on the ground, put two legs on the floor and sprang my still-asleep body up until I found my Mac, flipped it open and then let it fly.

Some of this writing is found here at Castles in the Air. Some of it can be found on The Heart of What Matters.

As for the rest? It is never published. Not because of fear or expectations or validations. But because it’s my writing, my work and sometimes, I need it to be solely mine.

Secret notebooks and sketchbooks with private swirling thoughts and images. These are yours; you don’t need to show them to anyone to validate your art, you as a person. They exist even without another soul ever glimpsing at their naked purpose.

The state of semi-conscious writing can propel the person to a flow that already exists within you. You need not create the flow, the zone, this writing attack, this trance writing, out of thin air. It’s already there, inside of you.

Feel yourself, feel your work. Now create it.