How to Use Meditation to Improve Your Writing

Writing and meditating are very different activities, but how can one help the other?

If you’re having trouble meditating, here are a few ideas on how you can use that time to fuel your craft. I think we should all be pushing to start doing true meditation, but if you’re having trouble fully emptying your mind, relaxing and thinking about your creative projects spurs some fantastic ideas.

I will start by saying that I am absolutely terrible at meditation. If you’re in the small subset of people like me who are primarily writers but want to practice meditation or yoga, then let’s go. It’s been seven months since I started trying to meditate periodically, either on my own or in yoga classes, and I’ve only successfully meditated for a quarter of those attempts.

I’m on a journey toward mindfulness and successful meditation. I’m early in that journey. But if you’re just starting out too, here are a few things that have helped me improve. If the alternative is thoughts about your day or current stressors interrupting your meditation, you may as well interrupt your meditation with creative thinking.

If you can’t stop the thoughts, try to shift into a slow, contemplative state.

Obviously, our main goal should be to stop our thoughts completely, gently nudge away the thoughts that echo through our minds when we’re trying to get them to be quiet.

That doesn’t always work. I’ll try that first, but there are times when I put too much energy into quieting my mind and then just end up thinking more.

If you’re in that boat, try to shift your mind into the contemplative, explorative state. Think slowly about what you’re writing. See if quieting your mind a little bit and contemplating on the stories you’ve considered writing but haven’t yet started or solidified can be developed a little.

Very often, fiction is more relaxing than reality.

Visualize scenes or moments in your story.

Do you ever have trouble really seeing every detail in the characters and scenery of the most important moments in your story?

Try to assemble that image in your mind. Focus on visualization and don’t have too many concrete thoughts about this or that.

See the settings. Imagine how it looks, what it smells like, what it sounds like. File this image away and when it’s time to write or edit that scene, you’ll be ready with captivatingly realistic details.

Let the image come into your mind and see everything. Don’t just mentally describe it. Try to silence the words and simply visualize them. We’re not trying to do mental free writing, we’re trying to simply see something without putting it into words.

If ideas aren’t coming, refocus your thoughts on your writing.

I’ve had one of my most enlightening and productive novel planning brainstorming sessions in an hour-long restorative yoga class. There’s something oddly soothing about laying on the floor in comfortable but odd poses and thinking about your characters and plot.

The other yogis in the room might be aghast if they knew I was engaged in active thought rather than proper meditation. However, though I was busily analyzing my characters’ motivations and if they were logical or not, I was wonderfully relaxed.

Being in a highly relaxed environment with occasional soothing words of instruction actually made for an excellent opportunity to think of nothing other than my writing.

I’ve tasked myself with making protected time to write, but making protected time to plan and analyze isn’t as easy. I’ll have ideas out of the blue and note them down, sure.

Think about happy or relaxing moments in your story.

See if dedicating your thoughts to peaceful, serene moments in any story you're working on can lead you into actual meditation. I’d be remiss if I didn’t give some suggestion to lead into more proper meditation. This has worked for me a few times; I’ll try to lose myself imagining and planning happy moments in my fiction, which will help relax my thoughts, and then let them stop completely.

I’m not great at relaxing when I think of anything in real life, so thinking about writing and different worlds of fiction for a little while can really help me decompress more than just breathing and berating myself for thinking.

If you end up thinking about writing and never actually start meditating, allot more time.

If you typically only have 10 minutes, try to extend it to 30 minutes. I know it gets trickier to allot that much time, especially if you’re practicing strictly in classes. However, try to meditate on your own and give yourself time.

It’s not always possible to empty your mind and actually achieve a state of peaceful meditation in just 10 minutes. You can try to gently nudge thoughts away, but they have a way of coming back unless you’ve truly relaxed. Let these thoughts about your writing lead you into that state of relaxation you need to meditate.

All in all, this has been some unusual advice for a highly niche community. However, I’m sure there’s a good handful of people out there who are longtime writers who are just starting to practice yoga, and these are some of the things that have helped me.

Meditation takes time to master. After all, it’s practice.

Much like writing practice, you’ve got to keep doing it to improve at it.

There are a lot of things you can do to improve your writing beyond the traditional tactics of writing often and reading even more. Those are always cornerstones to honing your craft.

Taking time for thought and planning can really help you develop your characters, your plot, and your worldbuilding. Meditation makes a surprisingly good opportunity to take a little time to think about these topics.