Writing Meditation: Revising Our Expectations For Our Work

Too often when we sit down to write, we bring our expectations for the work and ourselves to the party. How can we achieve flow and get to the heart of our stories when we're lost in the muddle of what we hope the book will accomplish, or our fear of failure? In this meditation, we work through how we're feeling about our works in progress (revision or drafting), and the expectations that tie us up in knots. Through a gentle mindfulness meditation, we explore how we're currently feeling about our work and gently disentangle ourselves from the snare of emotion. Then we move onto our expectations through a dynamic guided meditation that allows us to become a blank page, no longer bringing the burden of the expectations we cling to that so often drag our work (and us) down. By the end of this meditation, you'll feel rejuvenated and ready to dig back into your work with more focus and primed for flow.

Transcript

Welcome to mindfulness for writers.

We'll be doing a meditation today on revision.

So this will be a contemplation meditation.

So feel free to get comfortable.

You don't need to be in a traditional posture.

If you'd like to take a traditional seat,

That's fine.

But if you'd prefer to be a little more loosey-coosey,

That's fine too.

Just sitting comfortably with your eyes closed.

I'll be talking a little bit more than usual today,

Guiding us through some visualization.

But we'll have some pockets of silence as well.

So just take a moment to arrive in the space,

Letting go of any tension that you're feeling right now,

Anything the day has already brought into you,

Brought into your body,

Brought into your life.

Just take a moment to arrive,

To access being,

Just presence,

Just being presence and present.

So I'm going to ring the bell and allow that sound to just draw you into this space and into this meditation,

Giving yourself permission to be here,

To explore,

To feel,

To allow whatever is going to happen to happen.

Take a moment,

Have a nice deep breath,

Filling the lungs,

Allowing the breath to go down into the belly,

Letting out all tension with a nice audible sigh.

Just take a moment to find your breath,

Follow that breath as it goes in and out through your nostrils,

Finding that grounding center.

There's a lot of uncertainty when we come to the page,

A lot of uncertainty in the writer's life.

Your breath is always there for you.

It's always something that you can draw on and rest in when you are experiencing those doubts,

Those fears,

When you're faced with expectations,

When you don't know what to do with a book or with your career,

When you have a hard time trusting yourself,

When you feel like giving up.

You can always come back to the breath.

So take a moment just to enjoy being here,

Give yourself permission to just breathe,

Nowhere to go,

No one to be,

Nothing to do,

Nothing to plot,

No dialogue to write,

Just breathe.

Really enjoy just sitting here,

Even if your mind is racing,

That's okay.

The mind thinks,

That's what it does,

Let it think.

Let those thoughts go by,

Leaves on a fast flowing river.

What's it like to just be?

Take a nice breath.

I'm going to home in on how you feel about your project right now.

How do you feel about it right at this moment today as you sit here?

How do you feel about it?

It might be different from yesterday,

It might be different from a few hours ago.

Right now,

How do you feel about your project?

Try to get specific about the feeling.

So don't fall down the rabbit hole of the minutia of your plot,

Your characters,

What's working,

What's not working,

What your writers group said,

What your hopes are for the book.

Right now,

Just how do you feel when you think about this book?

When I said,

How do you feel about this project?

What hit you right then?

See if you can identify that feeling,

Is it sadness,

Fear,

Uncertainty?

Maybe it's excitement.

Maybe it's nervousness,

Worry,

Overwhelm,

Stress.

Could be delight as well,

Could be good things.

But if you have a feeling that's more on the sticky,

Difficult side,

Let's go with that one,

So we have something to work with.

So get clear on that feeling,

Identify it,

Not associating or attaching any other thoughts or ideas to it,

Just getting clear on the feeling.

Give yourself permission to feel that feeling.

Don't resist it,

Even if it doesn't feel good.

Invite that feeling to tea.

Let it sit with you for a while.

Let it hang out.

We spend so much time on positive affirmations and trying to encourage ourselves and putting up sticky notes and all of these things,

And that's all very good.

But sometimes what that does is really mask what's going on under the surface.

And what's going on under the surface will often show up in creative blocks or on the page or in any kind of other ways that create real problems for us with our work.

So we're going to deal with that head on.

Give yourself permission to feel it.

Again,

We're not attaching any thoughts or ideas,

So if your mind starts to spin webs and stories,

Why you feel it,

How you feel it,

Who is making you feel this way,

What someone said,

Maybe you're already starting to fix a scene in your head.

Just like in other mindfulness meditation,

Let those thoughts fly by.

And instead,

Have your object of meditation be how this feeling feels in your body.

Where does this feeling live?

So if you feel nervous about this project,

You're feeling some real anxiety about it,

Where do you feel that anxiety?

Is it in your belly,

In your throat,

In your chest?

Tips of your fingers,

Are they tingling?

Maybe even the bottoms of your feet.

Take a minute to do a body scan and see where is it hot?

Where do you think this feeling is living right now?

Where has it taken up residence?

Once you've identified where the feeling is,

We're going to take a couple minutes just to sit with that feeling and breathe into it.

So the more you invite what's happening to happen,

The less you resist it,

The less power it has over you.

We don't pretend to not be anxious,

We're scared,

We're depressed.

We face it,

Just like we ask our characters to face their challenges.

We're going to face it here.

So take a moment just to breathe and let your object of meditation be the physical sensation,

The physical manifestation of this feeling in your body.

Do that for a couple minutes.

Okay.

Just breathe into it.

Allow yourself to feel curious.

What does this feel like?

Is it tight?

Are you feeling a loosening?

Is it hot?

Is it cold?

Tingling?

What does it feel like in your body?

And now take a nice deep breath and let the focus on that part of your body go.

And if it feels right to you,

You can put a hand on your heart or in some way show yourself some gentleness,

Some love,

Some sort of kindness for the attention that you've given yourself,

The attention you've given your creative spirit.

So you've faced your fear or your anxiety or whatever you were feeling about your project.

We face that head on.

Maybe things have shifted for you,

Maybe not.

But now we're going to move into looking at not just how we feel about our project,

But what expectations have we brought to this book?

What expectations are we bringing to the page today?

Maybe we bring these expectations every day or maybe this is just today that we have these particular ones.

They might be good,

They might be bad.

But I want to take a moment to visualize what are the expectations that you have for this book?

Maybe it's getting a National Book Award.

You can visualize yourself walking across the stage to accept it or seeing the finished book on a bookshelf somewhere.

Perhaps your expectations are of rejection letters or of people laughing at it or of terrible reviews.

Whatever the expectations,

And it might be a mix,

Take a moment to visualize those things that you've been bringing to the page every time you sit down to write.

What have you been carrying?

See if you can make them as real as possible.

If nothing comes to mind,

Just sit in that place of not knowing.

See what bubbles up.

The first noble truth in Buddhism is that life is suffering.

But another way we can look at that is life is unsatisfactory.

And the second noble truth is that the cause of this suffering is our attachment to things that we desire,

Our clinging or grasping.

And so these expectations that we bring to our revision or our drafts or our completed books,

These can often cause discomfort or suffering during any part of the writing process.

We might not even realize where this discomfort is coming from,

But it often comes from these expectations that we've set up.

And Lamott says that expectations lead to disappointment.

Even if your expectations are a failure,

That can also lead to disappointment.

It could be a self-fulfilling prophecy.

We don't want to grasp to what is good or bad in these stories that we tell ourselves about this book that you're working on right now or any projects.

The story that this one will fail too,

Or the expectation that this is the one that's going to give you your big break.

The pressures that we put on ourselves and our work,

Whether it's for the craft or the sales,

Whatever it is.

When we bring those things to the page,

The work suffers.

And instead of allowing the book to be the boss,

Suddenly our ego is the boss.

And we're no longer able to work from a place of expansiveness and curiosity and openness.

We're working from a place of fear and expectation.

So first we want to get clear on how we feel and work on being in touch with that as we did at the beginning of the meditation.

And then we want to get clear on what these expectations are and how to dismantle them.

So you've thought of your expectations and now I'm going to walk you through visualizations so that we can let go of these expectations.

So in your mind,

I want you to take out a blank sheet of paper.

You're all writers,

So I know you can imagine this very well.

However you want,

The sheet of paper is blank.

Now I want you to take these expectations you've been visualizing and for each one,

I want you to write down the expectation.

You can write it as a list or separate sheets of paper.

Maybe it was getting that National Book Award,

Getting on the New York Times list,

Getting another rejection letter,

Whatever these expectations are,

Good,

Bad,

Whatever,

Write them down.

See these expectations clearly written down on this paper.

Maybe your list is very long.

Maybe there's just one.

We don't want to have any expectations,

Whether they are positive or negative.

We don't want to cling at all because that is where the suffering comes from.

So now I want you to hold on to that paper,

But imagine a burning fire.

It could be a bonfire on the beach,

A roaring fireplace,

Whatever suits your fancy.

Imagine a fire.

You can hear the flames,

Smell the smoke,

Feel the heat,

Really get in the presence of that fire.

Fire is destructive,

But it also has purifying,

Purging qualities.

And so we're going to hone in on those right now.

I want you to take that piece of paper and crumple it up.

Now I want you to throw that paper into the fire.

If you have multiple sheets of paper,

Throw each one in the fire.

Watch it burn.

Watch it burn until the paper catches flame,

The whole thing.

Watch it burn until it is nothing but ash.

Watch those expectations for your revision,

For your book,

Go up in flames.

Now I want you to take a breath,

Nice big breath.

Let it out.

Let those images dissolve.

I want you to take another sheet of paper,

Blank sheet of paper,

Set it out in your mind.

We revise our expectations by becoming the blank sheet.

We work from a place of possibility and expansiveness when we become the blank sheet.

This allows us to write the words that our hearts most deeply want to write.

This allows us to get to the white,

Hot,

Burning center of what we're trying to say.

I'm going to ring the bell.

Let the sound draw you out of the meditation,

Keeping that blank sheet in your mind.

Allow yourself to come back into the space,

Slowly opening your eyes,

Stretching,

Expressing gratitude to yourself in some way for going through this process.

Now all you have to do as a blank sheet is breathe,

Write,

And repeat.

Thank you.

Reviews

Wonderful. I'm so happy to practice a meditation specifically crafted for writers. Thank you so much🙏

I liked this writer-specific meditation and would like to see more. Thanks.

I have such a rich vision of my finished book - is this the same as expectations to blow into the fire? No expectations beyond that yet (published, awards, etc)
It was a challenge to blow this into the fire….
I’m ready to sit down with my laptop/blank page to see how this writing day unfolds 🙏🏼✨💫💃🏻

Very revealing, very helpful!

Tomorrow I am launching an online journal and I am finishing the debut post today. This was a tremendous help. Thank you!

Thank you so much for this brilliant guided meditation ❤️

very good advice, it's really helped me get writing without hindrances, eg expectations or stress.

Breathe write and repeat! Be the blank sheet, thankyou for the wisdom and space to be with my expectations

The shackles of expectations are the worst, thank you for the great meditation!

Thank You 🙏...now to write 😊.

Thank You 🙏...now to write 😊.

Very helpful! Thanks.

Perfect for managing all the emotions writers face while working on a draft or revision.

Very helpful practice! Brought clarity and inspiration. Thank you 🙏

Very helpful. Thank you....

Breathe, write, repeat. I like that, thank you. I’ll revisit this very encouraging and accessible meditation. Thanks again...now, where’s my pencil sharpener...

I was able to apply this to my own, non-writing project easily. Great meditation!

I entered into writing last year by taking a workshop on mindfulness and writing. It opened up a love for writing that I have been enjoying ever since. I’m glad to have found this guided meditation. It was wonderful. Even though I am a blog writer and not a novelist (yet), the meditation was helpful to me. I hope to find more like it. Thank you!

Thank you. I meditate daily to help me engage the writing process, to face the rejections, to accept the blessings. This meditation, however, is geared specifically towards writing, and I appreciate that greatly. 💙 Your meditation enabled me to feel and see more clearly. Again, thank you.

I’m currently working on my dissertation and thought this was really helpful for all types of writing projects, not just books per se! Thank you! I will definitely revisit this.