Writing doesn’t always flow. Everyone has tips and tricks about how to squeeze out more words. These are sometimes helpful, sometimes not. It’s a bit like going into an op shop and looking through piles of odds and ends, hoping to uncover a something precious and surprising.

One thing I do when I am having trouble writing, is I turn to Julia Cameron. One book in particular, The Right to Write (1998), is particularly helpful. It is the best writing motivator I have ever laid eyes on, and though I often don’t look at it for years at a time, when I return to it, I am always stunned by its pure truth.

The piece of advice that helped me recently was Julia’s suggestion that when we write, we shouldn’t be trying to ‘come up with stuff’. That approach, she reckons, is forced, and the effort comes across in writing that is laboured. Instead of trying to come up with stuff, Julia recommends ‘listening’.

Just listen.

If you stop trying to come up with stuff, and just listen, Julia writes, things will come to you. If you stop for long enough, it will happen. And then, instead of trying to come up with stuff, you’ll be busy ‘getting it down’. This suggests a much more harmonious process of ‘flow’. It also suggests that expecting something to come to us is about belief. About trust. If we truly don’t believe in the possibility, why would we ever bother to try?

I have experienced both methods, and so Julia’s words have a ring of truth. There is familiarity with what she describes . How many times I’ve tried to come up with stuff. How many times, while forcing out another hundred words, I’ve thought, I’m not made for this. Listening is not as easy as it sounds. Firstly, you have to remember to do it. Secondly, you have to make time for it. We have all sorts of excuses why time eludes us, but in the end, it’s in our hands. Our choice. Making time for the writing, grabbing time, rather than waiting for time to become available is how most writers do it. This is another nugget of advice from Julia. Write when you can. Write as much as possible. Don’t let small snippets of time put you off getting down some words, at the very least. So firstly we need to make time, grab time, show up to the page. And then we need to listen.

I know what she means. Sometimes, when I take the time to stop and listen, stuff comes to me. And if it’s the right moment, I can try to get it down. That is why writers always need their notebooks handy. When you are listening, you never know when, exactly, something will come your way. Which brings us to openness.

But that is a topic for another post.