Enhancing your Creative Flow: Pre-Writing Rituals That Work

We've all been there: you finally carve out some rare, precious minutes and endeavour to get as much writing done as possible. You tell yourself, "I'm really going to maximise this time, make the best possible use of these moments, get all these words out there."

It’s going to be great. You're going to be focused. You're going to be in flow. You're going to create something amazing.

So you sit down and ... nothing. You sharpen your pencil ... nothing. You rearrange your notebooks ... nothing. You make yourself a cup of tea ... still nothing.

It's just not happening.

This was the story of my life for more years (decades, if I'm being honest) than I care to admit. Perhaps the problem was that when I had such a minuscule amount of time, the perfectionist in me felt I had to be writing the absolute best stuff I could, and anything else was a waste of the moments I’d been gifted.

Aside from tackling my perfectionism (that's a whole other blog post!), I decided to put my psychology degree to good use and get Pavlovian on myself. You know about Pavlov, right? The conditioned response of dogs salivating expectantly in response to a ringing bell that became subconsciously associated with imminent feeding time.

I realised what I needed was to establish a set of triggers or conditions that would immediately kick my brain into creative flow -- into quickly letting go to allow for the best creative output. So I established a series of pre-writing rituals for myself. They had to be quick and simple, partly because if they were too lengthy or convoluted I wasn't going to do them, and also because I didn't want to waste that precious slice of writing time on preparing rather than actually writing.

If Pavlov taught us one thing, it's that triggers for conditioned responses don't have to be elaborate. The ding of a bell was all it took to train dogs to prepare for munchies.

You know yourself best and what will work for you in terms of rituals. You might like to devise your own, but if you're wanting a little guidance, here are a few suggestions. I use several of these in my own pre-writing practice.

Pick and choose the ones which will work best for you, but please remember to keep it down to less than 5 minutes if possible – and preferably even 2-3 minutes. This is a short, sharp trigger, not an elaborate ceremony.

1)     I create a short bullet-pointed plan of what I want to cover in this writing session (so that I don’t waste time wondering what to do!).

2)     I sit quietly, close my eyes, and take 5-10 slow deep breaths.

3)     I chose an affirmation that aligns with how I feel in that moment and what I want to achieve in this writing session.

4)     I visualise, as vividly as possible, words flowing onto the page, me writing in perfectly focused flow, and feeling accomplished, fulfilled and proud of what I’ve created at the end of the session.  

5)     I spritz the air with a little bit of a ‘creativity’ spray I created, which is a blend of rosemary, orange and jasmine: you could also light a candle or burn some incense.

Do let me know how pre-writing rituals work out for you! My whole ethos in running this site is to try to help you live the best writing life you can, so I'd love to hear how it works out for you.

Happy writing!

PS: if you’d like to explore other ways of aligning your mind and your intentions before you start to write, you could try our Pre-Write Meditation.

Pre-Write Meditation

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