Turn it over to your subconscious

When I'm struggling with my writing, or with a problem in my life, I find that the best idea is to sleep on it.  Turn the problem over to my subconscious and ask it to come up with the answers.

If it's the middle of the day and I can't go to sleep, then I'll go for a walk.  Anything like rhythmic exercise, driving, even the chore of ironing, switches us into right-brain mode and allows the creative side of our brain to come up with better answers than our logic-bound left brain.  

We need to get out of our own way, to switch off the conscious brain for a while, and let our subconscious take over.  But we need to listen for its answers too.  Often the messages of our subconscious are quieter than those of our logic-brain, a gentle whisper of "why don't you do that?"

There are times when I am in the flow that I feel like I am channelling words from somewhere outside, or from deep inside, myself.  I have even had the strange experience of watching me create words from a detached observer position, and wondering where they came from.

However it works, getting out of the way of our inner knowing and turning problems over to our subconscious works.  So next time you're stuck in your writing, go for a walk , or sleep on it.