Free Your Creative Mind
Get your subconscious working for you
by Kelly L. Stone

In these tough economic times, you have at your command an underused tool to help you overcome any obstacle to getting assignments, making money, and achieving success as a writer. This tool is your subconscious mind. Knowing how to access and use it means you can flourish even in times of scarcity.

Sigmund Freud, the father of modern day psychology, was the first to analyze the mind and create an understandable model of how it works. He discovered three components. The conscious mind is your day-to-day thinking mind. It can attend to only one thought at a time, and only that which passes through your immediate field of attention. The preconscious mind is between the conscious and the subconscious. It's a very concrete, "all or nothing" portion of mind that attempts to interfere with the goals of the conscious mind. I call this interference the "anti-writer." The subconscious mind is like a giant computer system with multiple input sources, constantly recording all of the details of your life, including those that bypass the conscious mind's field of attention.

The subconscious mind's unique characteristics are what make it so powerful. Always alert even when the conscious mind is not (during sleep and surgery), the subconscious stores material (memory) indefinitely, and whatever you program into it creates your reality. These three traits make the subconscious mind your most valuable writing tool.

Need fresh ideas? Ask your subconscious mind for a "sleep solution." During sleep, the subconscious spontaneously channels information to the conscious mind. You can capitalize on this natural process by directing your sleep into a form of subconscious communication.

Let's say you want to break into a high-paying magazine but need a spectacular idea to get the editor's attention. Ask for a sleep solution by posing the problem to your subconscious before bedtime. Say something like, "Subconscious, give me an idea for magazine X that will result in an assignment." Or, "Subconscious, give me a unique idea for magazine X that will grab the editor's attention."

This sleep solution technique is similar to sending away for information: You write a letter to a company (your subconscious), mail it (instruct your subconscious), and wait for a reply (sleep solution). The solution will usually come to you within a few days, and it comes in different ways with different people. You might experience hunches, an idea might pop into your head, or you might get flashes of insight or feel that you should take some action.

Sleep solutions also can help you with the mundane tasks of your writing job. The night before I handed in the manuscript for Time to Write, I asked my subconscious to alert me to any errors in the copy. When I woke up, I got a mental flash of three misspelled words and found the errors in the exact sections where I had pictured them. I corrected the mistakes and turned in error-free copy.

You do not always have to wait to receive sleep solutions; they often arrive as you're drifting off. The phase just before full sleep is called the hypnagogic state; it is characterized by periods of fleeting altered consciousness in which, among other things, subjects that have no relation are perceived as associated. Many writers keep paper and pen beside the bed to capture this unique material.

"I have jotted down questions or ideas before sleep and then had to turn the light on, because something clicked in those magical moments of just-before sleep," says ASJA member Jennifer L. W. Fink. "I now keep paper and a pencil in my bedside table just so I can capture those inspirations. It may be as simple as an opening line or a transition sentence, but capturing that on paper at night is often enough to keep me going in the morning."

Other writers, such as ASJA member Elva Anson, find that material gained upon waking in the middle of the night is often rich with creativity. "I sometimes wake up in the night with answers and ideas," says Anson. "When I get up and write them down, I discover in the morning that they are remarkably clear, with free-flowing access to words."

The subconscious mind is neutral, meaning that it believes whatever you tell it. This telling is in the form of your thoughts and feelings. If you are discouraged about the current state of your freelancing career and feel chronically down in the dumps, you are actually programming your subconscious mind to create more of that reality.

The solution is to program your subconscious in a positive direction. You must force your thinking off what you don't want (a foundering writing career or slow payment by recession-strapped publishers) and focus on what you do want (an abundance of high paying assignments and fast turnaround on your paychecks).

There are several ways to positively program your subconscious mind. One is to dwell on the end result—the finished article or a certain payment amount—rather than a dwindling bank account or lack of work.

"I try to keep the vision of the finished article, short story, or book in my mind," says ASJA member Kathleen Vyn. "That's what keeps me going."

Another method is the mirror technique. This exercise was created by the late Dr. Joseph Murphy, an early pioneer in the field of subconscious programming. The technique is simple—look in the mirror and make positive statements to yourself at least three times per day. Statements should be specific and in the present tense, as if they were already a reality. If you want a certain amount on a book advance, say something like, "I want to make a $50,000 advance." If you want more assignments each week say, "Editors love my ideas and assignments come freely and easily."

A crucial piece of this exercise is that you must feel how you will really feel when the result is achieved. Emotion is fuel to the subconscious and speeds up the programming process.

Another of Freud's discoveries about the mind was that each component operates independently from the other two. Since the anti-writer is a portion of your mind that resides in the preconscious, and the preconscious is a layer between the conscious and subconscious, the anti-writer can thwart your efforts at positive programming.

Here's an example of how the anti-writer works: Say you try the mirror technique, but while you are saying your positive statements, you are thinking and feeling that the technique is silly, that it won't work, or that there is no way you will ever break into a certain lucrative market. Those negative thoughts and feelings cancel out your positive efforts. More importantly, because the negative rather than the positive feelings are dominant, the negative is what gets programmed into your subconscious mind.

An effective way to identify and combat your anti-writer is to record over a short period of time all negative statements you think about your abilities or your career. At the end of one or two weeks, note themes and patterns, then write replacement thoughts. (Feeling follows thought, so changing your thoughts will change your feelings.) Write the replacement thoughts on index cards and any time you catch yourself having a negative thought, state your replacement thought immediately. For instance, if your anti-writer statement is, "I'll never break into magazine X," counter with, "Magazine X loves my work and gives me assignments frequently." This neutralizes the anti-writer.

There are other techniques for cleaning out the negative. ASJA member Janet Bailey, (www.mindful-time-management.com/blog), has a unique approach. "I keep a second document window open as I work, and whenever I get stuck, I move over to that second document and write exactly what I'm saying to myself about the project at that moment," she says. "Usually it's some version of: 'This is impossible. There's no way to word this sentence so that it's clear. I hate this.' Seeing those statements in writing shifts me from aimless wheel-spinning into problem-solving mode."

ASJA member Lynne Alpern was anxious about writing two sample chapters following her first book proposal and had difficulty beginning the project. Her replacement thought was "just start." "That's all it took to get beyond my nerves and start organizing my thoughts," says Alpern.

Your subconscious mind is your most powerful writing ally. Learning to use it effectively will aid both your creativity and your writing career efforts.

Kelly L Stone (www.KellyLStone.com) is a licensed mental health counselor and the author of three books, including the newly released Thinking Write: The Secret to Freeing Your Creative Mind (Adams Media, October 2009). Her weekly creativity tips can be found at
www.FreeYourCreativeMind.blogspot.com