This past winter was a day at the beach for a writer. Buried under 100 inches of snow, surrounded by 10 ft. tall drifts, my office became the adult version of a child’s snow fort. Trapped in a blue crystalline world with my imagination and my muses I was hard at work. Sorta, kinda….until the snow melted and the muses abandoned.

How unreliable they are. Convincing them to obey the will of the artiste is like herding cats. Yet when they perch on my shoulder and focus, the result is sheer joy.

Once this past winter I was compelled to write a play, beginning impulsively one evening at 10 PM. I wrote furiously. I produced a few pages, developed some characters, I even had a PLOT. I was on fire.

The next day while I was skiing with a friend I announced: “I have written a play!”

I entertained her with my cast of characters, my fascinating plot, my images of the decorative scenery.  There in the the afternoon cold, surrounded by white snow, yellow sunlight filtering through the dark barren trees, with the rhythm of the forest beating in my every stride, I could, I would, write the next Pulitzer. The muse was alive and fresh and my play’s future looked bright.

I saw her two weeks ago, returned from her months on Hilton Head, biking to the CVS and chamber music concerts.

“How is your play, I can’t wait to hear,” she prompted.

“The poor thing lies languishing in my projects drawer. I have lost the thread, the inspiration, the muse has abandoned.”

But today I learned there is an explanation for my problem and some small hope for recovery. It lies within the neuroplasticity of my brain.

First off, the brain wants to go to the negativity, the problems. This is an evolutionary protection. Hmm, I am about to write a poem about that tree over there. The one that sits so solemnly near to the pond’s edge. Hmm, what should I write? Those leaves rustling are really lovely, let’s start with that metaphor. Something from Walt Whitman perhaps?……… Look again, my old brain calls. Those leaves rustling aren’t just the work of the breeze. OMG, it’s really a woman-eating carnivorous dinosaur. No, its a band of roving Neanderthals about to use me for sport…….Oh just breathe…….Hmm, look again, its really two chipmunks playing tag!

But applying the principles of mindfulness and understanding the qualities of neuroplasticity of the brain, I shouldn’t bother with the tree at all, but rather see the space between the branches. Therein lies the essence of the tree. The play will appear when I stop focusing on the “writing,” “the plot,” “the characters.” It will appear in, hmm, just where is that again? It will coalesce in the out-breath, in the space around the concrete, in the act of creating itself.

Even if the play never gets written it turns out that the sheer act of writing was good for me. This has to do with creating little neuropathways to the left side of the brain, the reasonable, hopeful, optimistic side of the brain, as opposed to the right side of the brain, the emotional, pessimistic, suspicious side of the brain.

Psychologists tell us that just the act of making pathways from the right side to the left side is helpful. And the path they suggest is “naming the feelings.” Just giving the feeling that is living in the reptilian part of the brain a name carves a little roadway into the left side of the brain. They recommend we blah, blah, blah it up. “I felt abandoned by my mother, father, aunt, cocker spaniel etc….” This makes us more optimistic, happier, well-adjusted and sociable.

As a writer I prefer the keyboarding method to the talking thing. So I write. Sorta, kinda. When the muses perch.