This week’s questions is:

 What part of character creation do you find the hardest?

Book recommendation of the week is: The Occupation Thesaurus by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi

My blog review and lessons learned How to use character occupations to deepen your characterization 

Grab The Occupation Thesaurus here.  

I was delighted to be interviewed by AG Billig on her Self-Publishing Mastery talks channel. We had an amazing chat  about adulting, parenting, creativity, routine and more. Watch here.

Find out more about today’s guest:

Website: www.alexbryantauthor.com 

Read his books: https://books2read.com/theidentitythief 

Instagram: @alexbryantauthor 

Facebook: @alexbryantauthor

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Rebel of the week this week is HB Lyne

If you’d like to be a Rebel of the week please do send in your story, it can be any kind of rebellion. You can email your rebel story to rebelauthorpodcast@gmail.com or tweet me @rebelauthorpod

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Thank you to new patron Cari Buziak. Also a huge thank you to all my current patrons, you help not only to keep the podcast running. You make me feel like my potty mouth antics are worthwhile. 

If you’d like to support the show, and get access to all the bonus essays, posts and content, you can from as little as $2 a month by visiting: www.patreon.com/sachablack 

That’s sacha with a C not an S

THIS EPISODE WAS SPONSORED BY KOBO WRITING LIFE

Visit Kobo Writing Life here, read the Kobo Writing Life blog here, and listen to their podcast here.

The post 042 Character Psychology with Dr Alex Bryant appeared first on Sacha Black.

I’m frustrated because I have shit to do, books to write, stories to tell. Yet two things are standing in my way. Life bullshit and self-doubt.

What do I mean by life bullshit? Oh you know… The crap, the stuff and the things… Shit that incessantly fills my day like, work. Fuck work, I should be writing. Having to pay bills. Tut. Such an inconvenience. Chores, cleaning, cooking. ALWAYS cooking. Then there’s life admin, you know, keeping myself clean enough I don’t get lice, my eyebrows neat enough I don’t poke someone’s eye out with a stray hair, emails, meter readings, food sho….sorry I fell asleep writing the list.

If that bore list isn’t enough to prevent me writing, I have to wage a daily war against the smarmy king of mind fucking himself: self-doubt. I hate it.

So here I am. Standing Sitting in front of you sharing my battle plan to nuke my self-doubt into the next mass extinction.

There’s this phrase: ‘Surprise people. Be who you say you’re going to be.’ I love that. The concept that we’re spending the majority of our time masquerading as something we’re not. Like fat middle-aged men dressed as clowns…

But it’s kind of true, isn’t it? I mean… are you really the same you in work as you are out of work? I’m not. I doubt you are.

It’s like friend circles. We all have more than one circle of friends and usually they don’t mix. It’s so we can be (however slight) a different version of ourselves. I’ve spent a long time trying to hide different parts of me, thinking I couldn’t possibly show all of me because…because why? Because the skinny bitch at work with big tits and fake everything, except her really big nose, might think I’m weird? Jesus. I need to get over myself. I was born weird. What the hell was I thinking?

I can pin point the first broken link in my chainmail. Someone once told me my personality was a risk to my reputation. Over the last 5 years I’ve let that… and a bunch of other really helpful shit people have said to me, fester in my subconscious. The result is I can’t recognise the person looking back at me in the mirror. Worse, I don’t even like this version of me. I’m negative to the point of irritation. I’m plagued by fears, self-doubt and a chronic case of not being able to see the wood for the trees. So much so it’s paralysing my writing to the point where this year alone, I’ve almost quit. Several times.

No more.

Blonde bitch tits and her jumped up mates can go rubber duck themselves off the cliff…

*wipes brow, sips wine, takes deep breath*

Let me start again…

Where are you going to be in a year?

No, really…

Not where you tell people you’re going to be, but where are you actually going to be?

Are you one of these writers people who wants to be a writer and says they write but actually either a) fucks about writing blog posts instead of her novel, yes I am talking about me, procrastinates on social media and professes to write? or are you b) an actual fucking writer that sits down and bleeds claret over their keyboard?

Self-doubt is a plague. A fucking plague. It’s worse than Damien Hirst’s formaldehyde. It will freeze you up. For life.

So let me ask you again. Where are you going to be in a year? Are you going to continue to be person A? or are you going to be who you say you are and be person B?

STEP ONE – Decision Time

The first step to reducing self-doubt to a snivelling, pant wetting wreck in need of palliative care is to make an effing decision.

And I don’t mean the: “hmm, shall I have the custard or jam filled donut?” while you scratch your arse and fanny about with work emails, kind of decision.

I mean the: how much do you really want your dream, kind of decision. Do you want it enough you’ll work after work, late into the night until your eyes are bleeding and your fingers are begging for a hot oil massage?

Have you got what it takes? Are you prepared to make sacrifices? Are you ready for a marathon? To stick to your work until it is done and edited for the 29875248975th time?

If you answered yes, then what the fuck are you doing standing in your own way?

See that’s the thing. Once you make the decision. A real one. One that cuts deep into your soul, there’s no going back. Not even a little whiny bitch like self-doubt can get in your way. If it does,  punch it in the fucking face and walk on by. Unless you decide you’re going to achieve something, you’ll never try.

I choose person B: In one year, I’ll have finished two books, minimum.

Who do you choose?

STEP TWO – Draw your sword

You made the decision to achieve your dream, in spite of self-doubt and fear. Awesome. But decisions require action. If you’re guna achieve Stephen Kingdom then you actually need to, god forbid, do some writing.

So step two is to take your pen out. AND write. Write proper words, not a blog post, or a piece of flash fiction. Write that big scary horrible beast you’re afraid of…your novel, or your competition story, or whatever Hansel and Gretel yarn you’re currently spinning. Just for five minutes. Everyone has five minutes. Taking a dump can last longer than that, so do it on the toilet if you really can’t spare any other time.

Ease yourself in. Write for five minutes. Break for ten. Write for Ten. Break for five. REPEAT until you look up at the clock and find it’s actually 12pm Sunday and not 12pm Saturday.

Or if the self-doubt is eating away at your ability to share your work, then take just a snippet. Start with just 200 words. BUT GIVE IT TO SOMEONE other than mumsy. Feedback is a gift.

If you’re too scared to submit to a competition, then JUST DO IT. Do a flash fiction one if you must, but this is your choice and your career. If you don’t submit/write/share you’re always going to be person A.

STEP THREE – Reward your inner child

I can’t claim this one. Joanna Penn’s idea of using a calendar, setting daily targets and marking them on it, is proper good’un!

It appeals to my inner child (as well as hers) and reminds me of my stars and cloud chart I had as a terror tot, angelic child.

By appealing to my inner child, and the thought of a) a reward and b) knowing that my word count is there, visible for all and sundry to see, is enough to make the shame of having zeros on display beat the self-doubt back down.

As you can see I had a bit of a dodgy end to the month (but I only started on the 20th). Green ticks are days I achieve my target, which is a minimum of 1000 words a day. Edit days are different, the word count is irrelevant. However, really, I should still be writing 1000 a day. So here’s to hoping May is better.

If I get more than 15 green stripes next month, I’ll reward myself, I don’t know what with, but it’s something to aim for.

STEP FOUR – Theme Tune

Everyone needs a theme tune. Find yours. Whatever your song is, it needs to be the one that never fails to focus you, to motivate you and to give you that Rocky on the stairs moment where you know you’re guna smash it.

Once you found it, play it constantly, listen to it in the gym, whilst you’re cooking and ironing. Set it as your alarm clock so you wake up on the ‘write side’ of the bed. Every time you hear it, you’ll know a) you rock, and b) you should be writing instead of listening to it!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NubH5BDOaD8

What do you do to conquer the self doubts? Have they paralysed you before? Let me know in the comments.

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The post Don't Let Writers' Self-Doubt Beat You – 4 Steps to Conquer it appeared first on Sacha Black.

Do you have a smell, or ‘thing’ that makes you recall an incident or memory vividly? If so what is it? Let me know in the comments. Is it a sound? Or smell? Or maybe the feel of a certain fabric?

I tend to have certain songs that remind me of people or times in my life, a few particularly from uni, like Mr Brightside. Every time I would hear that song in a club at uni, I would drunk dial my bezzie mate (if she wasn’t with me) and slur at the top of my voice down the phone vaguely in time to the lyrics. It was like a love note to my buddy. Now when I hear the song, it reminds me of sweaty dancing, dingy union club nights and a lot of happy times.

I also get the same thing with smells. They seem to evoke the strongest sense of memory. Nag Champa incense sticks for example, fling me back to Nepal and my days trekking in the Himalayas. How wonderful that things can do this to us, but how? And how can we transfer that into our writing?

Smell is so important – think about when you get a cold. You can’t taste a damn thing can you? Well – that’s because taste and smell – although separate senses, are intricately linked, but you can read about that here. And what of the perfume industry? It has always been a wonder to me that girls buy girls perfume and boys buy boy perfume. Personally I love the smell of boys perfume – it was designed for women to love it, to find it attractive. SO WHY DON’T GIRLS WEAR IT? If it was designed for us to love it seems bonkers we don’t wear it. Can you tell this annoys me? I always wear boys perfume in protest!

The parts of the brain most commonly associated with memory are the amygdala in the temporal lobe and the hippocampus. Smells are processed by the olfactory bulbs – which start in the nose and run under the brain, close to the hippocampus and the amygdala which controls memory.

However,  sight, sound and touch sensory information don’t run near these parts of the brain which is why smell more than any other part of the brain is so closely linked to memory. Smell and memory perception centres in the brain cross over and get caught in each others paths. Giving us this wonderful opportunity as a writer to exploit its benefits.

Plenty of scientific articles demonstrate using fMRI scanning that the brain displays more activity when intense memories are evoked through smell. Unfortunately for us writers, studies also show that the brain is more active when actually smelling the aroma rather than reading the word(1).

That being said, I also know, having read a lot of psychology science papers at uni that, when a person reads the word associated to a smell, the same areas of the brain are lit up on the scanners – meaning their brains are having similar experiences as if they were actually smelling it for real, albeit less intensely.

So what does this mean as writers?

I was chatting to Jane a while back, about how smell is always the forgotten sense. But actually it gives so much depth to a piece of writing, some authors are able to capture smell so vividly you can actually taste the air, or feel your stomach gurgle as a juicy piece of cake is laid on the table for a characters birthday. My point is, I often neglect other senses on a first draft, and actually you don’t need reams of aromatic description, the odd well placed sentence is more than enough.

A couple of examples for you:

“The house smelled musty and damp, and a little sweet, as if it were haunted by the ghosts of long-dead cookies.” ― Neil Gaiman, American Gods

“He wraps his arms around me and holds me tight for a few seconds. His breaths tickle my ear, and I close my eyes, letting myself finally relax. He smells like wind and sweat and soap, like Tobias and like safety.”  ― Veronica Roth, Allegiant

How have you used smell in your work? Or do you have a certain smell or sound that evokes a memory for you? Let me know in the comments. 

Here’s one more random question, I couldn’t decide which photo to use as my blog post cover. Which do you prefer – the one at the top, or this one, and why?

References

(1) Arshamian A, Iannilli E, Gerber JC, Willander J, Persson J, Seo H-S, Hummel T, & Larsson M. The functional neuroanatomy of odor evoked autobiographical memories cued by odors and words. Neuropsychologia 51 (2013), 123-131.

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The post Evoking Memories – A Writers Must appeared first on Sacha Black.

You have to be in their mindset. The YA mindset. See, I have this theory that people stop ageing. I mean, yeah, sure, chronologically we ‘grow’ old. But how many people do you know in their 60’s, 70’s or 80’s who actually act like it? My guess is not many. It’s because people stop ageing. We get to a certain level of maturity or chronological age and then poof. Things stop developing, we think as we did at that age, we just add more experience to help reason our decision making. So what does this mean for writing effective YA stories?

Well, here’s the science. 95% of our brains are fully formed by the time we are 6 years old. Most of the last 5% develops in a spurt around adolescence. What does that mean?  YA brains are basically adult brains. They possess the same intellectual abilities, reasoning and capacity as that of fully fledged adults. The only difference is experience. I stopped ageing at 16. My wife, at 21. My mum at 19. When did you stop ageing?

I think the fact I stopped at 16 gives me a small advantage writing for the YA genre, because I can slip back to thinking as I did back then. I have an addition to my theory… and I say this tentatively because I don’t want to offend anyone or make anyone think I’m ageist… I’m not. But, I think baby boomers and older generations stopped ageing slightly older than the X, Y and current Z generations. This is for various reasons. But all societally driven.

X, but specifically Y and Z generations typically grow up faster, are exposed to more at a younger age and more frequently than previous generations. Just look at cinema ratings, there are 15 rated films that terrify me. They are immune to traditional marketing ploys too – because they have seen it, got the t-shirt and bought the gadget last season. They don’t get a chance to age further than their teens.

I think this is the reason the YA market is becoming so massive is because you have an entire generation of teens (Y) who stopped growing and are now adults who brought their YA fiction love with them. And now you have another generation Z who are doing the same. Finally, the older X generation are in my opinion a hybrid of Y and boomers. But what does this all mean? And how does this help write YA fiction?

Here’s a breakdown of what I’ve learnt so far.

ONE

YA stands for Young Adult. The world adult is in there for a reason. Science says they already have adult brains, so as writers we need to respect the fact they are actually adults. This means no simplification, no patronisation and absolutely no holding back.

TWO

They are adults BUT, without experience. Just because they have adult brains doesn’t mean they have had adult experiences and in fact, a lot of these ‘first’ experiences are the subject matter for YA books.

THREE

Not having had experiences means they don’t have examples of reasoning and rationalising decisions. That means sometimes they will make fantastic decisions and other times they will make catastrophic choices – if you don’t have experience to tell you likely outcomes your going on trial and error and emotive (i’ll go into this later) judgements.

FOUR

Sex. Sex is generally the deal breaker between classifying your book as YA or NA (New Adult). But, most 16 year olds have had sex. Actually, lets be honest, most 15 year olds have, and if they haven’t had it, have had their hands down pants and in bras. A lot of writers are shying away from writing first fumbles and awful cherry popping sex because it makes them uncomfortable.

Stop that. Seriously. Stop it. Young adults shag just as much as we adults do. Get over it, and write about the tingles that rushed down her back as his hands slipped up her top and unhooked her bra. How she moaned and then caught her breath as his hand ran over her breast…. see is it really that hard? You don’t need to be crass, this isn’t erotica.

Remember point two – they have no experience. Sex and any associated fumbles are their first… you have to write it with the innocence of a first time… can you remember your first time? The anxiety, anticipation and then exhilaration? Capture that.

FIVE

I am going to have a rant now. I have read a series of cliche bashing posts in the last week, thats what prompted this one. Stop bashing cliches. YA literature is full of them sure – your handsome love interest, a love triangle, a ‘saviour/ only possible hero,’ etc etc. You know what, there are hundreds of super famous YA authors who use cliches in their YA fiction. IT WORKS. Look at Divergent, Uglies, Hunger Games… all using the same formula. Sure – do something unique or you won’t sell a book and you wont have a hook, but don’t dismiss a cliche just because its been done. They are popular for a reason. People like them.

SIX

And the reason they work? Because this isn’t real life. It’s fiction for a reason people, and fiction that’s often (ok selfishly) fantasy. It’s a chance for YA’s to play through all those first experiences in a safe environment – they read about them, understand the mistakes characters make so they don’t have to. If I wanted to read literary fiction, and a masterpiece in societal philosophy I’d pick up that yawn fest. But that’s not why I read YA. I read it to escape. To live the dream, and to witness the struggles you have to go through to get to happily ever after. Because, god isn’t that so sweet? That conflict and hardship that ends in true love and heroes conquering evil. That shit doesn’t happen in real life. I want to read it in a story.

Give me hope damnit.

SEVEN

Emotions. Young Adults in the early years go through puberty, in the later stages they experience new things for the first time. Both these phases of life are extremely emotive, without the added stress of dealing with hyperactive hormones. I mean PMT is bad enough, let alone the raging hormones of puberty.

First experiences are scary, especially because you don’t have any knowledge  to predict outcomes or what the consequences of your actions might be. When was the last time you did something for the first time? Maybe you should try something new – remind yourself how it feels.

EIGHT

It’s a fact we live in a fast paced world. But younger generations are faster than any that have come before. They can have everything on demand Now, Yesterday. Accessibility to technology, information, education, fashion, sex, money and experiences is easier and simpler than ever before. If they make a mistake they can press backspace and delete it. YA’s are hungry. Hungry because they have everything and they can get more. Give it to them. Because secretly we all want it too.

The post 8 Steps To Cracking The YA Mindset appeared first on Sacha Black.

Who’s in your inner circle? You know, that group of friends that you can count on one hand. The ones you would pick up in the middle of the night, or who would hold back your hair whilst you throw up after a hard night out…?

What do you think of when you think of those friends? More importantly what single word would you use to describe them? If you were to write them into your novel what would their archetype be? Let me know in the comments below.

As I write scenes with supporting characters, I’ve come to realise just how important they are. I didn’t give much consideration to what my protagonist needed in her inner circle before I started writing, and as a result, I had some missing elements and some elements that were there and didn’t need to be.

What happened? Some of the missing elements found themselves drawn into one particular character. This character was never meant to be anything more than a bit part. But he has quietly crept into the forefront of my story without me realising, and now is a major player. Which is going to result in major rewrites… sigh. You’d think if you created them they would at least do what you say…

This is where I battle with the plotter / pantser continuum, I want to stop what I am doing and plan, plan, plan, until I know exactly what my characters should be doing. But here’s the thing, my characters don’t listen to me anyway! So I will continue on in my strange pantser way and settle my inner plotter by thinking about this before starting my second draft.

Recipe For A Protagonists Inner Circle 

1. Choose Archetypes Carefully

 When I realised I had a problem I started thinking about character archetypes. Every character is different and will have a different selection of traits and behaviours and therefore, need a different set of things from their inner circle. But there are only so many archetypes or types of character. Ask yourself, what’s my characters arc? They should change and go on a journey throughout your story. As a basic example, if they start out as an unhelpful person then they should end up helpful by the time the story finishes. Their inner circle should be structured to either help or hinder that change. I intend on choosing a balanced mix of archetypal characters for my protagonists circle that will eventually help her get to the end of the book and her ‘changed state’ but not without pushing her to her limits first.

What’s an archetype? Here’s some examples:

• The love interest
• The friend
• The conflict
• The mentor
• The Hero and or (usually but not always the protagonist)
• The Leader (usually but not always the protagonist)
• The supporter / friend who would fight to the death for you
• The carer/parent
• The resourceful one (who can find that thing you need in the nick of time)
• The enemy

2. Add Specific Traits

Of course there are more specific things you may need in an inner circle which either provide support to your protagonist, incite action or help solve a problem, but these can be built in through traits, for example: sporty/physically strong, the researcher/clever one, popular, dramatic, aggressive/angry etc. If your character is unhelpful, what do they need to become helpful? A kind friend? Or a nasty enemy to be unhelpful to them to give them a taste of their own medicine?

3. A Dash of Major Minor Characters

Most of the inner circle will comprise main or secondary characters. These characters need almost as much attention as your main character. They need enough history and depth to give the richness needed for an interesting character but also to make the behaviours needed to influence your protagonist seem authentic.

4. Add A Sprinkling of Minor Minor Characters

Not all of your characters inner circle will be Major Minor characters. Some will be Minor Minor. What do I mean? Take the classic archetype of a mentor. Mentors are not meant to be on every page of a story. They flit in and out only occasionally entering the pages to give a useful insight or make a thought provoking statement to prod your protagonist in the right direction. But not appearing on lots of pages means there’s not a lot of space to make them memorable.

Minor Minor characters are only briefly in stories, so make them larger than life in order to have an impact. Give them a distinctive characteristics, one or two would do.

Maybe your mentor has a moustache that wiggles, or she constantly bites her nails? Maybe he’s a gossip or liar.

5. Drain Off The Redundant Characters 

If your minor minor – or major minor for that matter – characters only appear once, or seem completely unrelated or out of place. If you struggle to find things for them to do in each scene, and they just say stuff for the sake of it… DRAIN THEM OFF. You don’t need them. It will seem more peculiar for a random character to come in and say ‘ta da’ with the answer than it will for a member of the inner circle to have worked out a problem over time.

I’ve done this with two characters. They were always there – but without a role to play, just characters taking up space and words without any purpose, so I killed those babies off cut them out and drained them away! Your protagonists inner circle has to be sharp and purposeful, so if your supporting players seem redundant just get rid of them.

Bake for approximately 100,000 words and voila… you have an inner circle.

The post 5 Step Recipe To Create Your Protagonist's Inner Circle appeared first on Sacha Black.

But is it really that strange? I’m starting to wonder if I am missing a trick by succumbing to the ease and speed of my keyboard, and the slap slap – edit, check, delete, Ctrl C, Ctrl V.

This topic is extremely close to my heart. Six years ago, I was awarded a scholarship in Sydney to do a PhD on Distributed Cognition (DC), it was the wrong time, wrong place so, I didn’t take it (much to my wife’s disgust, who was so desperate to live there and had already booked a visa interview!).

But the topic still fascinates me, and it has come to the fore of my mind again because of the writers I have met who write by hand. I used to be totally against DC, but in my age, I have mellowed and as much as I hate to admit it (and I really do hate to admit it) I was wrong. I am going to ask you a series of questions throughout this post, to try and help you work out how DC can help you with your writing. How many of you write your first drafts by hand? Why? Why do you write by hand, and not type on the computer? For those of you that don’t, why don’t you? To understand DC first, we must understand what cognition is:

Dictionary.com says cognition is: Noun

1. The act or process of knowing; perception.
2. The product of such a process; something thus known, perceived, etc.
3. knowledge.

Google says:

1. The mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses
2. A perception, sensation, idea, or intuition resulting from the process of cognition

The origin of Cognition is from the Latin word – cognoscere ‘get to know’ which I think is a much more pertinent definition when we think about DC, it is the process that is important. Not the knowing, but the action of getting to know. Traditionally, cognition was thought of as ‘thought processes’ which were until recently accepted as being confined within the constructs of brain, skin and cells. Defining Distributed Cognition is somewhat harder. Partly because it is an academic topic, so I am trained to give definitions of essay length, and filled with complex arguments. Let me see if I can give you two working examples.

But first, I want to ask you another question: When you have a problem, a messy, awkward and causing you ball ache kind of problem, how do you go about figuring out a solution?

• Are you an introverted problem solver? Do you need time out from everyone to think and ponder and speculate whilst you devise a plan? Do you need a pen or pencil to draw squiggly diagrams?
• Or, are you an extroverted problem solver? Do you need people, or a person to bounce and spark ideas from to provide challenge?

Example One:

I’m an extroverted thinker, I think with my mouth… literally. You know that awful phrase ‘think before you speak’? Well, to me, it’s incomprehensible. Introverts say stuff like that, because they can think before they speak. I’m not attacking introverts here, not at all. I wish I could think before I speak, it’s a skill I admire and respect. But that’s just not how my brain works.

I process physically, with my mouth, in real time, and that’s the key phrase. As the words form it is my brain forming them, just physically and verbally rather than silently. My words are a physical representation of my thought process, which means I ramble, I am messy and I jump to and from conversations. But, eventually, I will form a coherent sentence which makes sense and solves the pesky problem. Nine times out of ten I don’t know what I think until I say it. I don’t have a mechanism for consciously processing in silence. I find myself saying things to my wife or colleagues like ‘Don’t write this down I’m just trying it out…’

Example Two: Are you a doodler? Do you ever get frustrated when trying to explain something? Do you sigh and reach for a pen and piece of paper to draw a diagram? Perhaps you are problem solving and need that comfort of pen and paper to physically draw out that solution of how to get from A to Z. This happened to me the other day.

Ironically I needed to explain how I like to approach a project (ironic because I was explaining why I needed ‘people’ around me)… Don’t laugh, here is my doodle. I am circle A and trying to get to Z. I want to follow that straight line. That big squirly circle next to me with arrows pointing in, is where I need people to bounce ideas off so that I can follow the arched arrow from A straight to Z. It’s where my thinking happens to create a path from A to Z. If I don’t get that input at the start and at key points in between I follow the turquoise line, sh*t hits the fan I back track and go round the houses to get to Z. It’s inefficient. So What Is Distributed Cognition?

I already said; Cognition was until recently thought of as purely ‘thought processes’ which were accepted as being confined within the constructs of brain, skin and cells. But what if it wasn’t confined to your brain? What if thought, conscious physical thought didn’t have to be restricted, confined even to your brain. What if we could think together, as one, at the same time? Have you ever had a friend that can finish your sentences? How can they do that? Is it because they know you so well they can predict what you are saying? Maybe. But I think there’s more to it; what if you are both sharing thoughts? Thinking together? There’s that wonderful phrase ‘Oh your on my wavelength’ what if the wavelength was real? A thing out there in the physical space between you, interacting with affecting your own thought process. What about the pianist whose fingers think for him when they strike keys and create symphonies?

When you use a pen to draw a diagram, it’s more than just a physical representation of your thoughts on the page. It is your thoughts. It’s in real time, and if you weren’t drawing you wouldn’t have come to that conclusion. Writing is an insular job. Too often, we are afraid to talk to others about our work. We are afraid to commit our ideas to the air. Afraid of them not being good enough. Afraid of being judged, of theft, and a million other reasons all stop us from committing anything to the world before we are ready. I’m challenging that.

Use Distributed Cognition to help you write, and write better. This can work even if you are an introverted thinker. If You Are An Extrovert Thinker: Share those raw ideas, those infantile thoughts with someone you trust, or someone you know will challenge you. Allow yourself to be affected by others. Let them spark you, question you, get on your wavelength. If You Are An Introverted Thinker: Just try it. Talk through your ideas with someone else but then go away take their thoughts/questions and points and digest them alone. If that terrifies you, then pick up a pen, and figure it out just you and a piece of paper. Next time you have a spot of writers block or a sticky character problem stop banging your head against your laptop. Stop trying to figure it out alone. Let yourself distribute your cognition. Instead of being caught in the same old cycle of: Think it, Write it, Share it. Try: Sharing it, Thinking it, Writing it… See what happens…. Afterall, didn’t your mother ever tell you a problem shared is a problem halved?

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