Mental Writing Can Improve Your Work!

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Hello Steemians! I wanted to share something I recently began doing that is aiding me immensely as I write daily for Steemit. It's called Mental Writing and it is as simple as it sounds, writing in your head instead of with pen and paper or a computer keyboard. It works best in my experience for abstract/creative writing or poetry, but can be applied to any type of writing to improve the vividness & potency of your pieces. It also has the added benefit of improving memory, an area which is dismally weak for most modern humans because of our over-reliance on technology to record and preserve records.

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How To Do It

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You can either begin with a phrase that comes to your mind, or a concept that you think is interesting, or both. I will use the example of a recent piece that I wrote entitled "Between, I am" to illustrate, which was 90% written in my head, recited several times out loud, and then typed up.

In this case, a sudden phrase popped into my mind,

Between the actual and the supposed, I am...

Which led quickly to a concept, that of being between opposites. From there my brain began to explore abstract images to convey the feeling of being between certain things. Thus, I finished the phrase.

Between the actual and the supposed,
I am a tiger which crouches in
A grove of bamboo.

From there, I expanded to a second stanza which would continue the pattern:

Between the settled and the uncertain,
I am a heron of newspaper which
Crumbles yellow with age.

I repeated this phrase slowly, several times, to really feel & digest the intention of the abstraction it was intended to convey. Then, I returned back to the first stanza and recited it out loud. Something was missing in describing the tiger. I extrapolated an idea from the second stanza back to the first and got:

Between the actual and the supposed,
I am a tiger of blood and metal
Crouching hidden in a
Grove of bamboo.

From there I felt more satisfied and comfortable with those two stanzas. So I began to create a third:

Between the lasting and the fleeting,
I am an obsidian ant queen laying
Glass eggs in an emerald palace.

This line was a little modified in the final version. But it was vivid in my mind, so I felt comfortable to continue.

Between the pleasing and the ugly,
I am the sulphur smoke of post-celebration,
I am fireworks of salt.

Here I first broke the pattern of using animal images, which felt like a nice contrast to the first three, so I was satisfied. I went on:

Between the strong & the impotent
I am a denim rhino bejeweled with the
Clippings of historic battles.

I was delighted with the image of a denim rhino, but still felt the stanza could be improved. However, at this point, I was getting a bit worried that I would forget the earlier stanzas. So, starting at the first one, I slowly and mindfully began to recite them out loud:

Between the actul & the supposed
I am a tiger of blood and metal
Crouching hidden in a
Grove of bamboo.

Between the settled & the uncertain
I am a heron of newspaper that
Crumples yellow with age.

Between the lasting & the fleeting
I am an obsidian ant queen that
Lays glass eggs in a
Palace of emerald.

Between the pleasing & the ugly
I am the sulphur smoke of post-celebration;
I am fireworks of salt.

Between the strong & the impotent
I am a denim rhino bejeweled with the
Clippings of historic battles.

Here I paused. I worked on the rhino line in my head, repeating it, trying to understand the feeling of the sense I wanted to convey. I eventually modified it to:

Between the strong & the impotent
I am a denim rhino bejeweled with
Glossy buttons that celebrate
Historic battles.

Later in the editing, "historic battles" was changed to "battles of the past" when I typed the piece up. So when you do the process, don't worry about things being perfect, just focus on the intensity and clarity of meaning that the lines are wanting to convey.

Anyway, at this point I felt the piece needed to shift a bit in attitude, so I wanted to write something a bit more surprising, and perhaps comical. I thought of a chessboard that was burnt and an angry person knocking all the pieces off the board.

Between the exuberant & the surly
I am a chessboard with scorch marks;
I am the hand that knocks the
Pieces to the floor.

Next, I thought of a line that really made me laugh with glee! I'm not sure if it's really that funny, but it amused me greatly, so it stuck in my head:

Between the terse & the wordy
I am a rubric of red ink that
Screams in the faces of
Children.

After this, I paused again, and recited the whole piece up to this point. I was pretty shocked to see that I had been able to remember everything, even if I had to stop to think about the lines!

Then, I felt the piece was beginning to wrap up. After a couple of whimsical lines, I wanted it to become more serious and "basic," so I constructed the following:

Between joy & despair
I am the candle of a
Shooting star that
Sprays wax across the
Galaxy.

Between victory & defeat
I am the mother that weeps.

Between love & hate
I am a newborn baby
Safe in its cradle of
Mirrors and light

These lines were quite different than the others, and we had totally left the animal imagery behind! At this point, again, I said the whole piece, and I knew it very well. Now I was antsy to write it down!

I went to my computer and typed it all up. I still felt like it wasn't completely wrapped up, so at my computer I wrote the last two stanzas:

Between everything & nothing
I am a comet of gems that
Dies in a glorious
Conflagration.

Between life & death
I am an eternal fish
Sleeping away the
Centuries.

I read the whole piece through and made minor edits and added punctuation where needed. The more I re-read it I began to wonder whether the comet line was really necessary. I decided that it wasn't, and cut it out. The piece was finished, and was almost entirely Mental Writing! It was a real feeling of accomplishment, and very fun. Here's the link again to the finished piece "Between, I Am" if you'd like to read it in its entirety in its finished form.

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Conclusion

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Mental Writing is an exercise I will be using much more in the future. It felt very wholesome and powerful compared to sitting with a piece of paper or with a screen. I hope that this article was not too boring, but I want to share more of the writing process of my pieces! I think it's important to dispel the myth that some people are good writers and some are bad. It is simply a matter of daily practice! This exercise was rather challenging and a bit scary for me, but it's great because you need to remain very focused and calm, so that you don't forget your piece. I hope you will consider using Mental Writing in the future, even to write a few short lines!

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Thank you so much for reading.
Have an excellent day!
Daniel Pendergraft
@d-pend
9/3/17

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