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9 Authors on What They Eat While Writing

We know Walt Whitman treated himself to a breakfast of oysters before working, and that Emily Dickinson loved baking bread in between poems. (It might be a myth that Ernest Hemingway wrote drunk, but he was definitely fond of peanut butter-and-onion sandwiches.) What about writers in 2017? Are they drinking green juices to stoke the fires of their brain, getting in their good fats via avocado toast? We asked nine authors with books on recent shelves about what they snack on while writing—or, as it turns out, to procrastinate writing.

Levy’s memoir, The Rules Do Not Apply , is available now.

Before she begins working, Levy has a breakfast influenced by her travels in southeast Asia, which feature heavily in her new book. “I’m a big fan of non-breakfast food for breakfast," she told Bon Appétit . "I could easily start the day with a pork chop, or noodle soup —which actually is breakfast food in most of Asia, so that works out really well for me whenever I’m there.”

During the writing process, she eats “like a rabbit—or, I suppose, like a rat: carrots, radishes, little bits of cheese.” And when she has more time, it’s a little more elaborate. In high school, Levy read John Updike’s The Witches of Eastwick , “and for some reason it got me really into cooking. I think I imagined myself to be a kind of sorceress at a cauldron from then on. I associate that period with white bean and kale soup from the Moosewood Cookbook , applesauce and oatmeal muffins from Bert Greene’s Grains , and this really delicious pan-fried chicken my mother taught me to make: you dredge boneless breasts in four cups of breadcrumbs and then basically fry them in lots of butter and olive oil with garlic slivers.” She still makes it now, with capers, red pepper flakes, and red wine vinegar reduced in the pan—“I learned that from Lydia Bastianich one afternoon when I was watching PBS.”

Sherman Alexie

Alexie’s memoir, You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me , is available now.

These days, when novelist, poet, and filmmaker Alexie is working, he snacks on fruit and vegetables —but it wasn’t always that way. “For much of my adult life, I’ve eaten like a teenager: a lot of tortilla chips. Writing, I would often go through whole bags.” It wasn’t until recently that he abandoned his “carbo-writing diet” and become more conscious of his snacking. (At the time of our interview, he hadn’t had a tortilla chip in exactly 109 days.)

He developed a hankering for salty snacks very young. Alexie grew up on the Spokane Indian Reservation where "you pretty much ate everything that walked, swam, or flew." He recalls the construction of the Grand Coulee Dam, the subsequent loss of wild salmon, and the camaraderie it fostered: “People would bring dried salmon to our reservation to sell. I remember they’d be parked at intersections and you’d stop to buy dried salmon , and how amazing that was. It was a sort of Salish people’s communion.” While at home, his family learned to get experimental with the government food they were provided, “and you’d have these strange meals, like peanut butter with peaches . The peanut butter was great; it was natural peanut butter. Now everybody eats that; there are seventeen kinds in even the most generic grocery store. But back then, it felt like poverty.”

Lately, the tortilla-chip-drought has been rough: “Crunching on salt is such a part of my creative process that I can feel it missing. That’s the thing when you talk to writers about anything —it’s the obsession. I’m learning how to disconnect the need for the crunch, for the salt, for the carbs. I’m also pivoting in my writing; I’m pursuing a whole new line of artistic interrogation of the world and broadening my outlook. The joke was always, ‘So, Sherman, what’s your next book about?’ My answer would always be, ‘Indians.’ But I’m taking a wider look at the world, and now when people ask, ‘What’s your next book about?’ I’ll say, ‘Well, it’s an Indian looking at the whole world.’ I think my diet change and my artistic aesthetic change are the same thing.”

Lesley Nneka Arimah

Arimah’s debut story collection, What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky , is available now.

It’s easy for Arimah to forget to eat while she’s working on one of her short stories: “When I’m in the zone, I can go hours and hours without a meal or snack, because I'm worried that stopping will break the spell.” On the other hand, when she’s procrastinating “and looking for distractions, food tops the list because eating feels productive—I’m fueling my body!—even if I'm not actually hungry.”

Instead of working, she might cook up something she grew up eating. Both of Arimah’s parents loved to cook, “so there was always something brewing on the stove when I was a kid. Some of my favorite memories are of the dishes I helped prepare, whether it was washing the skin off beans for moin-moin [Nigerian bean pudding] or sorting rice. It meant spending time with my mother, which I loved to do, and listening in on adult gossip if I stayed quiet enough.”

And though she’s “read all the literature and seen every warning about this and I know how terrible it is, but I love to eat in the middle of the night. Not just snacking, but full meals. I will eat lasagna or a plate with meat and sides . Nothing tastes as good as it does between 2-3:00 a.m.”

Lynne Barrett

Barrett recently published a story in the Spring 2017 edition of Mystery Tribune . You can order her collection of stories, Magpies , here.

For Barrett’s writing practice, “ritual is important, and food always marks stages in my writing time.” She’ll write very early, sometimes around 4 a.m., writing herself into consciousness. After having coffee and feeling her “brain crinkle to greater alertness on bitterness and foam,” she’ll eventually prepare snacks for grazing. “Picture slices of avocado, some cold salmon, and a cup of Greek yogurt, plain, with all possible fat. I put my food someplace where I won’t knock it over, though I still do, sometimes.”

Barrett eats similarly as she did as a child, when she realized she hated sugar. “It’s like eating paste laced with perfume.” Instead, she’d “beg to mop up the adults’ shrimp scampi leavings, dredging my dull frozen fish fingers in oil, garlic, parsley, red pepper, and the tang of shrimp shells. I’d eat whole lemon slices, cooked or raw.” Luckily, sweets were rare. “We didn’t have much money, and any baked desserts were homemade. Gradually, my family adjusted to my strangeness. I fought small battles defending one aspect of my peculiar self early, which has made it easier, since then, going against other expectations.”

Durga Chew-Bose

Chew-Bose’s essay collection, Too Much and Not the Mood , is available now.

Chew-Bose moved back to her hometown of Montreal to work on her book, Too Much and Not the Mood , and “entered a weird unconscious state of just trying to get it out. Hours would elapse and I would forget to eat. But my mom and my dad were so sweet—for a couple weeks, they would cook and bring me food. One day my dad showed up with this half-chicken and fries from a Portuguese place, and it lasted me for at least three meals. My mom would bring me my favorite meat sauce or some kind of stir-fry . I had reached a state beyond the ability to make it to the grocery store.”

“I’m making it sound a lot more intense,” she said, “Writing a book is, in so many ways, such a privilege, and so is having your parents come and bring you food, but that also might be a cultural thing: ‘We want to feed you! We love that you’re home! How can we help you?’”

After finishing a draft, she’ll treat herself, “meaning I peel myself away from my computer and eat on a table that isn’t my desk. I’m a huge fan of creating an elaborate snack plate, with crackers and cheese , and these Italian pickled vegetables …I just want to make bites, as opposed to feeling the heaviness of a whole meal that will inevitably require that I need to take a nap after.” She fills small bowls with foods like “ maraschino cherries , and olives , and all these things that are probably so incongruous taste-wise—nothing that’ll be too messy or require that I have to do anything in between bites. It’s kind of like the most crass cheese plate.” Keeping things simple as important. “I feel like the moment I commit my mind to anything else that’s creative, even if it’s the energy I need to harness to figure out what I’m wearing to go out, or creating a meal, it’s like taking brain space away from what I need to put into my work.”

Sloane Crosley

Crosley’s forthcoming book of essays, Look Alive Out There, will be published in spring 2018. Her novel, The Clasp , is available here.

If Crosley is writing in bed, she’ll eat in bed, too— “a bit gross and a bit reminiscent of having the flu. If I’m writing in bed, it means I grabbed my laptop when I woke up and am having such a good writing day that I didn't want to break my concentration by changing locales. So I go to the kitchen, put a bagel on a plate and practically run back.”

Crosley keeps foods like “ dried mango, kale chips, candy, Tate’s cookies ” out of the house, for safety purposes. “I’ll plow right through them. There’s no rhyme or reason. I look at the nutritional information and the serving suggestions seem like a joke to me.” Her uninhibited approach to snacking started early: “I grew up in the era of Play-Doh and sweet-smelling erasers shaped like fruit. So my earliest memories of food involve trying to eat rubber grapes. Luckily, my palate matured before I could do any real damage to myself.”

She admits she “should probably use food as a treat, as some reward system for hitting a daily word count, but I more use it to avoid hitting my daily word count. I’m not sure if you’re aware of this, but eating is easier and more fun than writing.”

Nicole Dennis-Benn

Dennis-Benn’s debut novel, Here Comes the Sun , a story about three generations of women navigating love and fighting for independence in the fictional Jamaican town of River Bank, is now out in paperback.

Dennis-Benn has amazingly healthy snacking-while-writing habits. “When I’m writing, I find that I hardly eat anything—my wife is always the one that forces me to eat properly when I’m in the middle of a project. But when I’m stuck, I’ll brew a second cup of coffee and have popcorn, grapes, apple slices or any fruits that are in season.” Growing up in Jamaica, “we turn to fruits for sustenance and snacks. I brought that habit with me.”

When she takes breaks, she loves “to eat in the living room. That’s where my wife and I have dinner, breakfast, or brunch, if it’s a weekend. It’s really comforting, and it’s also a communion.” That kind of closeness was fostered early. Dennis-Benn’s first ‘food memory’ is the love with which her great-grandmother fed her second helpings. “I loved chicken ; I still do. Usually, when we finished our plates, that was it. But she knew I loved it so much that she’d give me her own portion.”

Sheila Heti

Heti's latest play, All Our Happy Days Are Stupid , was performed at The Kitchen in New York City in February 2015.

When Heti is writing, she becomes “careless about my body. I just don’t pay attention to food. I can’t think about my physical body that much to begin with...I’ll realize I’m really hungry and eat whatever’s in the fridge. Or I’ll have a piece of chocolate and a coffee in the morning and say, ‘This’ll take me to lunch, I hope!’ I’m lucky that my boyfriend is a very good cook. Otherwise, I would probably subsist on cheese and crackers .”

Which she’s kind of done before. When Heti was a child, “I’d go home for lunch every day; I remember taking this block of cheddar cheese out of the fridge and shredding it and reading an Archie comic, eating one shred at a time—putting it on my tongue and then swallowing it. It was my favorite thing.”

Her favorite thing now is Mado’s hot sauce , which is handmade in Toronto and available in just a few places in the city. Heti’s “obsessed with it. It’s a really hot Jamaican pepper. My favorite way to eat it is with a specific round Tostitos chip. My boyfriend sees me eating this and he just turns away. It’s a deep craving. I sweat because it’s so spicy; I have to shower afterwards, because I feel so high and dizzy from the spiciness, but I really, really like that.”

Emma Straub

Straub’s latest novel, Modern Lovers , is available here. Books Are Magic , the bookstore she opened with husband Michael Fusco-Straub, is open now.

Straub, a novelist who’d once never skipped a meal in her life, recently developed “a very strange relationship to food,” while simultaneously writing and opening Books Are Magic. “Every now and then you encounter people who say things like, ‘I forgot to eat lunch today,’ and I always thought they were making it up. But now, I’ll have half a bagel and cream cheese that my three-year-old dropped on the floor, and that’s breakfast, if I’m lucky. It’s not something that I enjoy, but my eating habit right now is eating things off the floor. That’s where the grilled cheese is; that’s where all of the food in my house ends up.”

When she writes, Straub snacks on “anything small that I can eat a lot of in one sitting, like chocolate-covered raisins . Anything you can eat just sort of compulsively is high on my list. I’m in the ‘I wrote a sentence, I deserve a snack!’ or ‘I can’t write a sentence, I deserve a snack!’ category.” Generally speaking, she has “the palate of either a four-year-old or an old business man. I want a steak , really, every night, and a large glass of red wine . I don’t think of myself as a very trendy eater. I don’t care about anything being juiced. If I have starch and sugar, I’m good.”

These morning buns are a great procrastination activity, which we know from experience:

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The Frangipani Creative

Encouraging You To Explore Your Creativity

Food that Can Help You Write Better

Writing / June 12, 2019 by Lux

We need books to sharpen our minds and help us write better. Humans as we are though, we writers also need food to nourish our bodies—especially our brains. Our parents used to tell us to eat a specific type of food to help us focus on our school works. So what are these foods that can give us the nutrition we need to keep on writing and write better? What is the ideal food that can help you write better?

Vitamin B9 or Folate plays a major role in our brains. Even for pregnant women, folate is an important nutrient for the brain development of babies. A deficiency in this vitamin can lead to serious neurodegeneration and brain dysfunction including depression and dementia. It has been found that folate helps avoid blood clots in the brain improving memory and concentration.

You need folate-rich foods in order to have sharper memory and better concentration when you write. So gobble up on your green vegetables, avocados, citrus fruits, liver, lentils, beets, and black eyes peas .

Gallic acid

You may not know it, but if you love blueberries, walnuts, and apples , you are getting your dose of gallic acid. They are powerful antioxidants and have been found to inhibit neuronal death and protect the brains from degeneration and stress.

Writers encounter different kinds of stress every day. If not properly nourished and sharpened, our brains will degenerate in time. Gallic acid can help us avoid these problems.

A fat soluble vitamin that is often underappreciated, Vitamin K is a powerful brain food. It helps the brains’ cognitive function and sharpens memory preventing Alzheimer’s disease. Like Vitamin B9 or folate, it helps prevent blood clots in the brains.

Spinach, kale, broccoli, avocados, spring onions, cabbage, prunes, and dairy are some foods that contain a rich amount of Vitamin K.

An essential nutrient for proper mental function, choline is found in eggs, liver, peanuts, meat, pasta, rice, and shellfish .

It stimulates the neurotransmitter in the nervous system that is responsible for memory and mental clarity. Choline promotes brain focus. It may not be getting the attention it deserves but it is vital for the brain to function. A deficiency in choline results memory loss, learning disability, nerve damage, mood changes or disorders and cognitive decline.

Dark chocolate , a healthier though more bitter variety of the beloved comfort food can make you happy because of the happy chemical endorphins that it contains. More than just elevating your mood though, chocolates improve blood flow to the brain. This is due to the flavonoids present.

Flavonoids are antioxidants, protecting the cells from degeneration.

Red bell peppers, strawberries, citrus fruits, garlic, mangoes, spinach, and green tea are some foods that are rich in flavonoids. Don’t you love roasted garlic especially in peanuts? And baked red bell peppers especially on top of your pizza? I do! As these are delicious food sources, it is no doubt that writing will be more fun while having these on your side.

We need food to survive. More than just surviving though, we need food to nourish our bodies and help us function normally and be at our best all the time.

As writers, we need to nourish ourselves with food that will not only help us enjoy our work more, but will also sharpen and strengthen our most used and essential tool—our brains. If we were soldiers going to a battle, our brains are our most important and powerful weapon. What better way to prepare for battle but to practice our moves and sharpen our weapons?

What food do you usually munch on when you’re writing? I hope you include these in your list.

Source: Dr. Axe

Lux is a pharmacist by profession, but a writer at heart. She's currently helping online businesses reach their target audience and grow at Internet Marketing Ad

Reader Interactions

[…] to this interesting article from The Frangipani Creative, there are a variety of foods that are incredibly beneficial to our brains (and can actually help […]

Top 8 Foods and Drinks for Writers

by Kellie McGann | 39 comments

Start Your Story TODAY! We’re teaching a new LIVE workshop this week to help you start your next book. Learn more and sign up here.

Now, I know what you're thinking. Food? Drinks? Those won't help my writing. Teach me about world building and commas . We do and we will continue to. Today, though, I think we ought to explore how food and drink can affect your writing.

For successful writers, there are three main components you need to really write: productivity, creativity, and inspiration. Without any one of these three, you'll find writing difficult, but when they come together, you will find your writing will be better and maybe even a bit easier.

Productivity

Productivity is the thing that keeps us going. It's what helps us put our fingers to the keyboard or pen to paper and actually write. Without it, no books would be finished, and you surely would not be reading this blog post.

Here are a few proven foods and drinks that boost productivity:

For my book, coffee is my favorite productivity hack. At this point, I think I've managed to classically condition my mind to believe that coffee and writing go together. But besides that, there are serious scientific facts about coffee increasing productivity.

Science lesson: what caffeine actually does is bind itself to the receptors in our brain that normally bind with adenosine, the chemical that makes us tired.

In layman's terms, coffee helps get rid of that strange daze we find ourselves lost in and allows our brain to think clearer in order to get words down on the page.

Also, there are studies that prove just the  smell  of coffee can wake you up .

For those of you who don't drink coffee, tea has similar effects. While coffee generally has a higher caffeine content, tea can be just as effective.

The benefit of tea over coffee is that tea can keep you going longer than coffee . Coffee can give you a high rush but is accompanied by a fast drop after the effects wear off.

Tea can keep you writing all day long. So tea drinkers, drink on.

3. Blueberries

Blueberries are a superfood. They increase productivity and do all sorts of other good things.

Science lesson number two: blueberries are full of antioxidants , which help keep oxygen and blood flowing to your brain, making your brain more active.

A more active brain can write better. Engage your brain; eat blueberries.

Also, blueberries are a natural mood stabilizer. Most of us writers need that occasionally. 🙂

This seems obvious, but most of us need to be reminded of this. One of the biggest reasons we get tired in the middle of the day is from dehydration. Being productive while tired is almost impossible.

Drinking water has been linked to focus and clarity , the main components of productivity. If we want to get our books written, pick up a glass of water.

If we want to get our books written even faster, one study notes that drinking one glass of water could make your brain function 14 percent faster!

What would our writing be without creativity? Probably awful and boring.

You know those moments when you don't know what to write next and all your ideas are kind of . . . bad? (Admit it, it happens.) Those are the moments to try one (or all) of the following:

5. Dark Chocolate

I will give you an excuse to eat dark chocolate any day, but there is evidence that links chocolate to creativity .

Chocolate is the perfect mix of caffeine and nutrients to give you a creative spark. The caffeine wakes the brain up to start thinking, while the nutrients in the chocolate actually dilate blood vessels to help you think  outside of the box.

Also, dark chocolate is full of serotonin and endorphins (the chemicals that make you happy). So if you want to think creatively and maybe boost your mood, go for the chocolate.

6. Ice Cream

I'm sitting in bed eating ice cream right now. I'm going to be real with you, there is not so much scientific fact backing up ice cream and creativity.  BUT  ice cream has been proven to have a  positive effect on your brain.

Psychology Today  has this to say about ice cream: “[T]he brain's responses to sadness were significantly reduced when the fatty solution was infused into the stomach. Respondents also reported less hunger and a better mood when the fatty solution was given.”

So if you're in a creative rut and feeling discouraged, ice cream is the way to go. Science said. (You're welcome.)

This one is my boss's favorite creativity booster. Beer on  multiple occasions and through multiple studies has been found to increase creativity by a significant amount.

When the alcohol from the beer hits your brain, it causes you to be less focused , normally a negative. But when you are looking to come up with an idea, the effects of the beer will have you less worried about the world around you and able to think  deeper  and come up with better ideas.

Teams have run  experiments  to test whether people who drink beer create better ideas, and the data show that alcohol-drinkers create  more  and even  better  ideas.

* Remember: everything in moderation. In drinking too much, you lose the benefits.*

But if you're stuck and out of ideas for your story, try cheers-ing.

Inspiration

Inspiration is vital to the success of your writing. Inspiration will keep you going when you no longer  feel  like writing and help you develop new ideas along the way.

8. Your Guilty Pleasure

The number one food or drink that boosts inspiration? Your guilty pleasure.

For me, this is almost always ice cream, but depending on the day, it might also be a really greasy cheeseburger from the store down the street.

Inspiration comes from something you love and believe in.

When you reward yourself every once in a while you will feel more inspired to believe in yourself to write great stories.

Writers Need Fuel

As writers and artists, we can fall victim to the Starving Artist Syndrome , sacrificing things like food and drink to focus on our art. But the truth is, writers need fuel.

Our art, stories, and writing can largely benefit from eating and drinking things that are already proven to help us work better. So why not try them?

What food or drink helps you write? Let us know in the comments below .

Brainstorm where you are in your project. Do you need more productivity, creativity, or inspiration?

Once you identify which one you need, remember a time when you had one of the corresponding foods or drinks.

Write for fifteen minutes about the feeling of becoming productive, creative, or inspired. Once you're finished, post your practice in the comments . (And then go get the food or drink for real!)

Remember to leave feedback on your fellow writers' pieces!

Kellie McGann

Kellie McGann is the founder of Write a Better Book . She partners with leaders to help tell their stories in book form.

On the weekends, she writes poetry and prose.

She contributes to The Write Practice every other Wednesday.

39 Comments

By the time I figure out what magic food I “need,” I could just grab a beefstick and write another 500 words.

If you don’t have the time to read a short article, maybe you’re in the wrong place, hot stuff.

Apologies, Rubis. I didn’t mean to come across as rude or unappreciative. Some TWP articles are extremely helpful for me. Some aren’t. This one wasn’t. I certainly don’t want to take anything away from those who do find it helpful.

On a positive note, I had enough time today to finish Chapter Four.

Congratulations! That’s pretty great. I appreciate your apology. It’s none of my business after all how you manage your time, so I apologise too. Have a good day

It’s all good, Rubis. The best to you in all your endeavors!

It hit me like a crashing wave—the feeling that every writer longs for, the feeling that there is something to accomplish, and that that accomplishment can be achieved by doing this, this, and this. Ideas bombarded me left and right, my hand barely able to keep up as it furiously scribbled away at the parchment below it. Words sprawled across the lines in a tangled mess that only my brain could decipher. That was okay with me. I was running on inspiration, a concept that had escaped me for years previously. Nights of seemingly endless dryness plagued my mind as I desperately attempted to write just anything. I would always tell myself to put the pen against the paper and let loose. Each time, it felt as though the depths of my creativity were but a dried up oil well, the rich supply of ideas long since having been evaporated into the atmosphere. Procrastination and hopelessness bore their holes into my imagination. Oh, how I longed for just one divine revelation on any of those nights. But alas, my desk lamp burned over me, illuminating my fearful failures as a an aspiring writer who had aspired nothing. Little did I know, I would strike oil soon enough. What a refreshing feeling! Where did it come from? I have no idea! It was just that morning that I had been munching away half awake at my corn flakes when the cogs in my brain fought to rotate against the dust and cobwebs I had allowed to form in the nooks and crannies. Perhaps this is an allegory to one of the many conditions of humanity. We have all of this potential but no idea how to use it, so eventually that potential gets tired of being put away that it decides to just charge in on us at random, possessing us like some sort of starving, maniacal, creating machine. Such a powerful possession it is to drive your hand to its cramping death, but such a relief it is all the same! After an unknown amount of time had passed, I had finished, the pen grasped firmly in my hand, deep indentations clear against my reddened tips. My hand trembled slightly as my eyes grazed over each word, taking in each thought, putting each idea into a broader picture—a glorious mess; my glorious mess. With a joyful smile plastered across my face, I slowly set down my pen.

Corryn, this is so fun! I love this piece. It’s really well written and your descriptions are wonderful! I love this idea of the potential getting tired of being put away and suddenly taking over. Great job!

Thank you for the feedback! I have often read these 15-minute prompts on The Write Practice and brushed them aside as they felt too daunting of a challenge (point for procrastination). But I’m glad I gave this one a shot. Thanks again!

I think I get a two-fer when I’m snacking on dark-chocolate-covered espresso beans. Glad to see my go-tos on the list, though I’m sure I could drink more water.

Kimberly, yes. That’s the perfect combo. Love it!

I would say I need Papa Johns pizza and some home made beef Jerky as a snack. Oooooo yeah! Now There’s some food for thought. Lol

Victoria, pizza is one of those guilty pleasures for sure :). Definitely food for thought! 😉

Read this while sipping my tea-followed-by-coffee morning combo. I didn’t know tea has longer-lasting effects!, so this explains my intuitive double-dose of my caffeinated friends. I take a thermos of tea with me to my writing desk so I don’t have to get up and be potentially distracted, too 🙂

Hey Lesley, good idea using the thermos! I didn’t know until I did some research either. Pretty cool!

Diet Pepsi, no question. Fizzy and caffeinated, not too sweet …it keeps me alert and focused. Diet colas have been called the “poor man’s Ritalin” because of the effects of aspartame and carbonation on the scattered ADD brain. I can’t sit down to write without it.

CJ, sounds like a good choice!

Pepsi Max, my drug of choice. 😉 Diet Pepsi with extra caffeine.

Once I start writing, (having overcome the slump), I forget everything, even eating or drinking, until I have put in an hour’s work. I become engrossed in the characters in my story, and feel I’m participating in all they do, as an invisible onlooker. I stop writing after an hour, to rest my eyes, stretch my legs, do some chores, or talk to the cats. If I have time, I go back to my keyboard, and take up from where I left off. Unfortunately, this miracle doesn’t happen every day.

Lilian, sounds like you have a great system in place! Love it!

Thanks, Kelly. For the past three days I’ve been short of time. Guests and family, more family to feed, to cheer and to go shopping. Sunday should give me an hour or two, to do as i wish.

Kikku, good idea to splash water on your face! That does always wake me up. I’ll have to try it!

Really? I didn’think know chocolate could help you in this way. I have to actually be acepted in the world of literature, but it has always been my dream to become an author. Right now, i am working on my second book. I hope you finish it before 7th grade. I am not the most experienced author yet, but your tips re helping me bit by bit to accomplish my dreams. Thank you so much!

I usually forget everything while writing like Lilian but my guilty pleasure is Mountain Dew and Toffifee. I’m also not working on anything right now because I’m gearing up for NaNo. Researching the hell out of my topic so there is no room for error and I make my word count by the end of November.

I thought I was the only one to keep munchies and a 52 ounce jug of water next to my keyboard besides my writing books. I don’t do coffee, tea, or beer, so the water will have to stave off my sleepiness.

You are going to KILL people with this kind of advice!

I read The Write Practice every day, but this article is unworthy of your platform.

In addition to writing (music, songs, novels, and poetry etc.). I am a nauropath, and I’ve seldom seen such irresponsible advice. Shame on you!

I strongly suggest that all readers research this data for themselves. Water is good, certainly, but how much and WHAT KIND? Same goes for dark chocolate and blueberries, but ice cream, greasy cheeseburgers, and caffeine? Never!

There are many natural, SAFE ways to clear the cobwebs from your mind and energize your entire body. If you don’t wish to familiarize yourself with molecular biochemistry, try visiting Primal Force’s website for healthy, natural ways to ‘youthen’ your mind and body. (There are other manufacturers and sources of information – ask Google – but I use products from this line myself, and have for decades.)

I wish you all the best of health!

Happy writing.

Jesse. http://www.jesseleighbrackstone.com

Thanks for your feedback, Jesse. However, please no shaming. This is a shame-free space. Thanks!

No shaming intended, Joe. I simply disagreed with the content of the article, scientifically, for the benefit of your readers.

I sincerely hope we can disagree amicably.

Tea and chocolate for me! 😉 What a great excuse to hide the goodies away from the kids and partner – mwuahaha! What a coincidence that blueberries are mentioned; we have just started growing our own!

I always start the day with a full pot of strong, black, unsweetened coffee while I check emails. When I start writing, I grab a sports bottle of tap water from the fridge during warmer weather, but now it’s decidedly cooler I’ll fix a cup of hot fruit tea in the first instance with the water there for an extra hydration boost

whiskey and edibles for me

Nicely written. You’ve got a natural blog voice. And I like all the things you listed (in moderation, of course). I’m a big fan of smoothies. The natural sugars give a sustained energy boost, and if you have local, seasonal fruit you can get some pretty incredible flavor. I live in Colorado and we had a great year for peaches, so I’ve been making peach smoothies with coconut milk for my walk-the-dog reward.

I drink a lot of tea and eat a lot of ice cream when I write. Although Cheez-Its and popcorn are also big writing staples for me. Fun post! 🙂 I love food.

I am a die hard coffee drinker… ( I even have a nano cup – although I dont drink from it because I don’t want the logo to come off any more than it is now) it is on my desk for inspiration. My next yummy treat is ice cream… and its definitely chocolate. But when I write I usually have something besides my pen to chew on.

Love these ideas thanks again.

Guayusa infusion (I use the teabags—I use Runa, and I don’t know who else produces these baga, at times) … Too much coffee/caffeine kills the good stuff … I have other relatively “jitter-free” sources of caffeine (like the Crystal Light “energy drinks”); and because I love coffee, I use half-caff brewed coffee a lot. You know that time when you can’t fall asleep at night just before you fall asleep. I mine some of that … The drunk old lady muse in my brain doesn’t get to be “drunk” otherwise …

Regular coffee is great for volume or if you’re closely mimicking somebody else’s style (or research/editing and ancillary activities). Sorry to say, for me … anxiety and other things like that being a problem. I have to avoid sugar.

Thanks for sharing. Food is vital, drink is vital too. Personnaly, I think that water is the first element, for desydratation comes quickly and our brain need water, a lot of water. I don’t agree with coffee, eventhough a cup of coffee is good in the morning to stimulate but coffee is a toxic drink and drive addiction. It’s like coca-cola or redbull or other energetic drinks. At the end, the system is lower than at the beginning of the day. You need more and more -like sugar-. Beer ? Not so good. Alcool is not good for creativity : don’t go into this myth. Ice-cream (sometimes in summer) but It’s not a food. (Too much lactose, too much sugar). Energetic food should be found in protein, fruits, nuts, vegetables) Some chocolate (back) may help, and vitamines and omega 3. Our brain need good nutriments but it’s not just for writers, it’s for everyone who need to perfom and maintain a high level of energy. Have fun !

I’m a teetotaler due to medical reasons. But my brain is naturally a little ‘snockered’, so that’s the effect that caffeine messes with … I did cut down caffeine a lot, but still a long way to go …

Kellie, I’m so glad I stumbled across the Write Practice as well as your blog! I love to write and often hold back for fear no one will want to ready my story. I’m excited to get some courage and inspiration from your blog!

After a cup of tea, I put on my headphones and listened to the music that had the same feeling as the scene I was writing. Once I started this, I could go on for hours, if no one disturbs me, which would often happen so I thought about putting up a do not disturb sign on my door. sometimes, though, I really don’t have the mood or the inspiration to do it, so I just take a break.

One, two and four. Maybe Wine, too.

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Writer Wednesday: 9 Types Of Brain Food For Writers

From Writer's Relief staff:

We all know certain foods contribute positively to your physical health, and some foods contribute positively (in inches) to your waistline. But did you know that some foods can support brain function—and maybe even make you a better writer? You might even see some of them on the table this Thanksgiving!

Antioxidants, like those found in fruits and vegetables, offer disease- and age-fighting power to keep your creative impulses firing at top speed. Blueberries are said to be especially powerful.

Omega-3 fatty acids (from fish oil and flax) are said to boost your brain’s gray matter. That’s like building muscle in your mind. Prepare to do some heavy mental lifting...or just impress people with your mental calisthenics.

Choline is a nutrient found in egg yolk or milk that can help ward off senility (which, to our mind, could also mean “increases clarity of thinking”). Choline also keeps your memory going strong, so you can actually remember whether your character was wearing a red shirt twenty pages ago or a blue one!

Folic acid: One study found that adults taking regular folic acid supplements demonstrated better cognitive function, especially in memory and critical thinking. So if you’re really having trouble getting past a problematic plot point, it may be time to supplement!

Chocolate lovers rejoice! According to WebMD: “A study by food scientists found that the antioxidant concentration in a cup of hot cocoa was higher than that found in either red wine or green tea.” Of course, getting your antioxidants from veggies (sans whipped cream, fat and added sugar) may be a better bet. But next time your spouse gives you “that look” for drinking hot chocolate, you can say “I’m doing it for my brain!”

Green tea is good for your brain. People who drink green tea regularly fare better mentally when it comes to aging. This is happy news for writers—especially if you’re the type who stays up into the wee hours working on a manuscript; your green tea can multitask by keeping you both awake AND young! Plus, moderate amounts of caffeine are said to boost concentration as long as you don’t overdo it.

Sugar. No, we’re not talking about the powdery white dusting on donuts, or the stuff that your grandpa dumps in his coffee until it’s thick as sludge. Nor are we talking about fake sugar substitutes. Your brain may not love what we call “sugar,” but it does love glucose. Glucose is what your body makes out of sugar and carbs. And a little lift in glucose can boost your concentration and alertness. Just be sure that when you reach for sweet, you’re reaching for healthy sweet: blueberries, oranges, etc. Your brain will get its glucose fix and some antioxidants too!

Breakfast. We know you don’t want to admit it, but your mom was right. Breakfast counts. Eat a moderate breakfast with protein and whole grains, and you—like countless human guinea pigs—may find that your concentration gets a boost. Just don’t eat too much or you’ll get sluggish.

Supplements . There’s a lot of back and forth these days about supplements. But research suggests that vitamins B, C, E, magnesium and beta-carotene may be helpful.

The Disclaimer

Do we even need to say this? We’re creative writers, not nutritionists. So you should hear yourself saying “What’s up, Doc?” before you alter your diet to power your brain.

Still, common sense doesn’t require a medical degree. So eat right, sleep deeply and drink plenty of water. Also take steps to protect your eyes from strain!

And if you don’t know what it means to eat right, consider Michael Pollan (author of “In Defense of Food” ), who takes all the food advice out there and breaks it down into three simple rules:

1. Eat REAL food (as opposed to "food-like substances"). 2. Not too much. 3. Mostly plants.

A healthy body usually brings about a healthy brain. And that makes for powerful writing!

QUESTION: What is your favorite healthy brain food on this list (or on your table)?

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More in books.

How to Fuel Your Creativity and Improve Your Writing with the Right Foods

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A common thread throughout the creative world for centuries has been that writers and other artists subsist on diets of coffee, alcohol, melancholy and poor decisions surrounding one’s health. While that is the case at times—and some of the most famous authors in history were “tortured souls” known for their delinquent health choices—nowadays, a healthy diet is something that simply cannot be shirked when creating art. Routines, a full night’s sleep, exercise and a diet rich in vitamins and whole foods are some of the easiest and most efficient ways to ensure your brain is alert and fruitful while writing.

Midnight Publishing is a company that assists in  all stages of the publishing process , and with our  professional editing services  we can polish your manuscript until it shines. But that doesn’t mean we don’t want you to first come to the page with a  positive, healthful mindset . Listed below are some of the best dietary items to look for when you’re fueling your creativity:

Best Dietary Items to Fuel Your Creativity

1. natural sugars.

Natural, unrefined sugars found in whole fruits like oranges, berries and bananas are all great ways to jumpstart your energy and concentration. Glucose, the natural sugar found in fruits and some vegetables, keeps your body energized while also regulating your blood sugar. Without glucose your blood sugar can dip to low levels, resulting in shakiness, headaches and a weakened state. Read about how glucose helps memory function here .

Lean protein is another way to feed your brain and body. White meat and skinless cuts like chicken or turkey are options with the lowest fat. They also provide important B vitamins, selenium and long-lasting fullness. Beans and lentils are another easy and inexpensive protein option, and a top choice for vegetarians. Find out more tips about adding protein to your diet here .

3. Chocolate

Yes, chocolate! It needs to be dark and high-quality, however, to get the most nutrients. Dark chocolate has a high amount of antioxidants, as well as other vitamins and minerals like iron, magnesium and fiber.  This article at Authority Nutrition also discusses how dark chocolate has been found in research to improve cognitive function , and it’s also been found to improve mood,  as discussed here at Naturally Savvy .

4. Omega-3 Fatty Acids

Primarily found in certain fish and nuts, omega-3 fatty acids are crucial in sustaining your brain function by assisting your heartrate, blood vessel function, and the inflammatory, cardiovascular and nervous systems. Foods especially high in omega-3 fatty acids include salmon, walnuts and some vegetables like spinach and kale.  Read more about the health benefits here .

5. Green Tea

To fight the stigma of “writers and their coffee,” consider trying out another source for caffeine. Green tea is one of the best ways to get a small amount of caffeine (proven to boost your concentration in very small doses). However, it also offers other benefits like maintaining a stable blood sugar, nourishing the blood vessels in your brain and providing a calming effect with a natural chemical found in it called theanine. Find out more of the health benefits of green tea here, at WebMD .

Whether you’re finishing a first draft or need a final proofread, Midnight Publishing’s editing, marketing, and publishing services can help you through each and every step along the way to publication. Find out why we have been trusted with more than half a million words, contact us today !

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• Neuroscience

Creative Writing and Your Brain

The mind works in mysterious ways when it is creating a fictional story..

Posted April 15, 2013

Is there a creative writer who hasn’t at times wondered what it is that impels thousands of people to spend thousands of hours thinking about and writing made-up stories, that at best will be read by thousands of people who have got nothing better to do than read made-up stories! Is there some evolutionary imperative that has moulded our minds to seek stories? Even Steven Pinker, the cognitive scientist and author of "How the Mind Works" --such a wonderful title-- who controversially suggests that music confers no survival advantage and describes it as “auditory cheesecake” (p. 534), submits that fiction can, like gossip, be biologically adaptive. “Fictional narratives supply us with a mental catalogue of the fatal conundrums we might face someday and the outcome of strategies we could deploy in them.” (p. 543.) Perhaps for writers of fiction the truth of this is even greater. But what does this mean for the mind? Does it suggest we have special systems in our brains that have evolved for the purpose of creating stories that might some day be useful in our real lives? And why is it that some people are better at making up stories than others, and if they are, are they therefore better prepared for whatever life throws at them?

In her book, "The Mystery of the Cleaning Lady", Australian novelist and creative writing teacher, Sue Woolfe, explores these questions in such an honest and personal way that I almost felt as if I were sitting in the room listening to her deepest thoughts. As a neuropsychologist, I often find myself cringing when I read fiction involving, for example, a character who has suffered a stroke, where some of the neurology facts are blatantly wrong. But this didn’t happen with Sue’s book, and I quickly became engrossed, finding myself reading it as a fledgling fiction writer, not as a neuroscientist .

Sue began writing the book as part of her doctoral thesis in creative writing, but this is no dry treatise. She takes her reader through her long, often tortuous process of completing her 2003 novel, "The Secret Cure", in itself a novel about the wonders of the creative human mind, all the while weaving in and out of neuroscience findings and theories that might explain some of her creative processes and how they can so often become blocked. In "The Secret Cure" Sue put herself inside the head of an unusual young man who had been isolated from the real world for almost 20 years because of his severe stutter (a cruel disability that used to be much more common, and was recently brought into the spotlight by the phenomenal success of the Oscar-winning film, "The King’s Speech".) The reader of "The Secret Cure" would be excused for thinking that Sue Woolfe must herself have worked in a research laboratory and have an inside knowledge of autistic disorders, so real was her writing. In her non-fiction writing memoir, "The Mystery of the Cleaning Lady: A writer looks at creativity and neuroscience", she takes us back there, showing us how her creative process soared and stumbled and soared again as she immersed herself in the imaginary world of her laboratory cleaning lady by spending time in a real laboratory and listening and observing and taking notes. When she found she could not write, she asked herself “what does a fiction writer do to her mind to create fiction, and was I doing something wrong that jeopardised my own work?”(p. 44.)

I, like most contemporary neuroscientists, tend to assume that everyone understands that the mind is a product of the brain. As Sue discovered, some neuroscientists like Antonio Damasio explain this further by pointing out that the brain, by itself, would have no mind. It requires the cooperation of the body in order to think and feel. It is this interaction between the brain and the body that causes the mind. In return, our feelings may seem to come from the body, and the body is modified by our thoughts and the brain by our actions. Sue gives many examples of writers who, like her, feel that their creative thoughts are somatic, and come from the belly, or the fingers, rather than from the brain (which in fact has no sensations of its own). As she tells us about her everyday, often painful, journey of creating her novel, she muses, comments, and analyses her creative process. Delving into neuroscience research on creativity, she reports and explains her discoveries in ways that made sense to me as a neuroscientist, but also made sense to me as a creative writer.

Sue begins a novel by writing numerous seemingly unrelated fragments, a process most productive when she is in an almost trancelike state she refers to as “loose construing” where attention is defocused rather than focused, logical thought is slowed, judgement and anticipation put on hold, and new elements can be allowed in without seeming incongruent, almost reminiscent of the dream state. Shaping the story from these fragments comes much later, probably involving more “tight construing” where logic and structure have a place. Only at the end do themes finally emerge. Another interesting idea Sue discusses is Damasio’s hypothesis that we have body reactions or “somatic markers” that imbue certain thoughts with emotional states, making them repugnant, and focuses us on thoughts that are more acceptable. This got her thinking about the constraints an avoidance of unacceptable thoughts can place on a writer. She decided that in order to enter the psyche of a character whose values and experiences were far removed from her own, she must allow herself through “loose construing” to think like her character, however unthinkable those thoughts might be. She learned that she must free her mind to work in its mysterious way to create a rich story; rich with more meanings than she ever consciously thought up.

In the end, Sue came to the conclusion that neuroscience does not yet know how the mind works when it comes to creating complex and rich stories that, from the writer’s point of view -- at least during those precious peak times of creation -- almost seem to write themselves. Rather like the process of writing a novel, the theme or deeper truth – how the mind works to create a story --may only appear after a much longer journey as we pull together the many fragments that neuroscience research throws up. For her readers, Sue has translated her discoveries of fragments of the mystery of creating stories into a writing book that is different, and a far cry from a writing manual. It is a pleasure to read and provides much food for thought and new strategies to try in those times when writing that book seems the worst idea you ever had.

For myself as a baby boomer neuropsychologist, and a writer of fiction as well as narrative non-fiction, I am convinced that creative writing is one of the best exercises we can do for the aging brain. The folklore, somewhat supported by research data, is that in most right-handed people, right brain (called the right hemisphere) thinking is more creative and holistic, and left hemisphere thinking more logical and linear. The right hemisphere is better at seeing the world from a broader perspective and may be better at visual imagery, and the left hemisphere is definitely dominant for language. But to believe the rhetoric of folk psychologists who claim that they can teach you how to draw or become more creative by using your right hemisphere is probably unwise. The brain is more like a great symphony orchestra where every part works in concert with the whole. Sure, occasionally the violins might soar above the rest, but even then they rely on the background of the orchestra as a beautifully coordinated entity to give them their full meaning. In the healthy brain, everything we do involves the right and left hemispheres of the brain working together, and creative writing must be one of the clearest examples of this. Our language comes primarily from the left hemisphere and perhaps our images – the visual ones at least -- come more from the right hemisphere. Very likely the “loose construing” Sue discusses is more a right hemisphere activity and the “tight construing” later needed to put the story together is more of a left hemisphere activity. But in both types of thinking and in all stages of writing that story, my guess is that both hemispheres are fully on-line. Reading fiction and narrative non-fiction also indisputably engages both sides of the brain, at least if the reader is engaged in the story.

The joy of this for a “baby boomer” writer or reader is that these pleasurable activities could almost certainly be added to the intellectual and physical exercises that slow down the brain’s aging process most often experienced by the forgetting of names and words and where you put the car keys – or the car! Neuroscience research is only at the beginning of proving the importance of ongoing intellectual activity for the brain – the “use it or lose it” idea -- but there is already some good evidence for this. From my personal experience, an entirely uncontrolled experiment, it seems that although I frequently can’t remember a word when in casual conversation, when I am writing this happens far less often. Perhaps this is because the brain is so fired up or primed for finding words when a writer is deeply focused on writing. Multiple word and image connections are firing, and thus the right word is more likely to pop up when it is needed. There is certainly evidence for this type of priming in memory studies.

A cynic may point out that for baby boomers who are way past their child-bearing years, getting your imagination working and activating your understanding of language by writing or reading fiction or creative non-fiction cannot be directly biologically adaptive. But if grandparents are important in the upbringing of their grandchildren – and we share 25% of our genes with each of our grandchildren, so their survival is biologically of utmost importance to us -- then remaining switched on for as long as possible can certainly be viewed as socially adaptive. And for all of us who love stories, who cares anyway? The pleasure is enough for us.

Jenni Ogden, Ph.D. , clinical neuropsychologist and author of Trouble in Mind, taught at the University of Auckland.

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Sticking up for yourself is no easy task. But there are concrete skills you can use to hone your assertiveness and advocate for yourself.

• Emotional Intelligence
• Gaslighting
• Affective Forecasting

Ann Kroeker, Writing Coach

May 8, 2015 10 Comments

#10: Food for Thought

I used to host a linkup on my blog called Food on Fridays . I started it because I realized I was writing about food almost every week, so I might as well publish those posts on a designated day. I picked a day that would allow me to use alliteration, and thus, Food on Fridays was born.

Then I discontinued Food on Fridays (sorry, foodies!). I’m not as creative in the kitchen any longer; I simply ran out of ideas.

But because Food on Fridays was such a big part of my online space and identity, I decided to dedicate a podcast episode to something food-related. Today’s episode (4:28) is a mash-up of Food on Fridays and The Writing Life and covers brain food for writers. I entitled it “Food for Thought.”

• Q&A with Delia McCabe 
• BBC’s goodood: 10 Foods to Boost Your Brainpower
• Today Health: Memory Boosters for Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner
• Science Daily: Green tea extract boosts your brain power, especially the working memory, new research shows
• Roasted Broccoli and Lemons with Brown Rice
• 107+ Tips To Increase Brain Power

Lemony Brown Rice and Broccoli

Based on the recipe linked above

• 1 bunch broccoli, heads broken into florets (you can peel and chop the stems, as well)
• 2 lemons cut into wedges (grate some of the rind for zest)
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• black pepper (optional, or just a pinch, to taste)
• 2 cups cooked brown rice (please note the rice is already cooked)

Preheat oven to 375°.  Spray baking sheet with oil spray, spread out the broccoli, sprinkle with lemon zest, drizzle with olive oil, and a little black pepper (just a little–or none if you’re not a fan of pepper). Bake 20 mins, stirring once or twice. Watch that the broccoli browns just a little–not too much. When the broccoli looks roasted, add to the bowl of rice (which was reheated, if necessary). Squeeze the lemon juice one wedge at a time over everything in the bowl. Toss gently and taste; add more lemon juice to suit your preferred amount. Serve alone or as a side dish with fish such as trout or salmon.

May 9, 2015 at 9:30 am

Speaking my language, friend! Love this and will always savor any food for thought you share.

May 16, 2015 at 3:44 pm

Food, food, food! Yes, food for thought is a perfect topic for you and I to discuss at length.

May 9, 2015 at 6:15 pm

Ann, How fun to hear your voice…thanks for the recipe…I am still learning Garage Band…

Thanks for listening, Dolly. I had the help of my husband who had some ideas right away how to get me started. I’m still learning, fumbling along, able to kick out a few of these podcasts. I’m sure I can improve my techniques!!

May 10, 2015 at 9:49 am

So much fun to hear this! I think it was your “Food on Fridays” posts that were some of the first I read online when I started connecting via blogs. 🙂

May 16, 2015 at 3:43 pm

Okay, so that’s a fun thing to learn about our connection. I think that’s how I connected with a lot of people. Maybe I need to re-launch it as “Brain Food” and post only healthy brain food ideas (recipes and activities, both)?

May 18, 2015 at 12:00 pm

Hi Ann, Being an RN and writer, I love your mash-up of brain food and writing! I am reminded of a book I read many years ago: Brain Longevity by Dharma Singh Khalsa, M.D. I just may need to pull it out again. And thanks for linking the resources. My husband and I purchased the NutriBullet extractor a year or so ago, and include daily portions of the leafy greens and many of the seeds and berries you mentioned. We noted significant mental clarity. Recently, I have been adding anti-inflammatory foods to my diet, as osteoarthritis has grabbed my attention. So I have increased my intake of foods with Omega-3 Fatty Acids, Vitamin C, and Bioflavonoids. Many of the same foods that fuel the brain! I was surprised to learn cherries ease arthritic pain. Of course, we could all use less of the salts, carbs, and sugars. Thanks for your broccoli recipe! Look forward to trying it.

May 21, 2015 at 11:04 pm

Excellent ideas and input, Sharon. Thank you!

May 20, 2015 at 1:48 pm

Thank you for your podcast! I really appreciate the chance to hear a word of encouragement. In my drafts is post I’ve revisited while eating lunch at my desk (at my office) for a month or two, and I just need to hit publish! Thank you for speaking boldly to us all Ann.

Thanks, Trish! I hope the brevity of these podcasts make them possible for you to listen to and get right back to work.

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• Writing Activities

105 Creative Writing Exercises To Get You Writing Again

You know that feeling when you just don’t feel like writing? Sometimes you can’t even get a word down on paper. It’s the most frustrating thing ever to a writer, especially when you’re working towards a deadline. The good news is that we have a list of 105 creative writing exercises to help you get motivated and start writing again!

What are creative writing exercises?

Creative writing exercises are short writing activities (normally around 10 minutes) designed to get you writing. The goal of these exercises is to give you the motivation to put words onto a blank paper. These words don’t need to be logical or meaningful, neither do they need to be grammatically correct or spelt correctly. The whole idea is to just get you writing something, anything. The end result of these quick creative writing exercises is normally a series of notes, bullet points or ramblings that you can, later on, use as inspiration for a bigger piece of writing such as a story or a poem. 

Good creative writing exercises are short, quick and easy to complete. You shouldn’t need to think too much about your style of writing or how imaginative your notes are. Just write anything that comes to mind, and you’ll be on the road to improving your creative writing skills and beating writer’s block . 

Use the generator below to get a random creative writing exercise idea:

List of 105+ Creative Writing Exercises

Here are over 105 creative writing exercises to give your brain a workout and help those creative juices flow again:

• Set a timer for 60 seconds. Now write down as many words or phrases that come to mind at that moment.
• Pick any colour you like. Now start your sentence with this colour. For example, Orange, the colour of my favourite top. 
• Open a book or dictionary on a random page. Pick a random word. You can close your eyes and slowly move your finger across the page. Now, write a paragraph with this random word in it. You can even use an online dictionary to get random words:

• Create your own alphabet picture book or list. It can be A to Z of animals, food, monsters or anything else you like!
• Using only the sense of smell, describe where you are right now.
• Take a snack break. While eating your snack write down the exact taste of that food. The goal of this creative writing exercise is to make your readers savour this food as well.
• Pick a random object in your room and write a short paragraph from its point of view. For example, how does your pencil feel? What if your lamp had feelings?
• Describe your dream house. Where would you live one day? Is it huge or tiny? 
• Pick two different TV shows, movies or books that you like. Now swap the main character. What if Supergirl was in Twilight? What if SpongeBob SquarePants was in The Flash? Write a short scene using this character swap as inspiration.
• What’s your favourite video game? Write at least 10 tips for playing this game.
• Pick your favourite hobby or sport. Now pretend an alien has just landed on Earth and you need to teach it this hobby or sport. Write at least ten tips on how you would teach this alien.
• Use a random image generator and write a paragraph about the first picture you see.

• Write a letter to your favourite celebrity or character. What inspires you most about them? Can you think of a memorable moment where this person’s life affected yours? We have this helpful guide on writing a letter to your best friend for extra inspiration.
• Write down at least 10 benefits of writing. This can help motivate you and beat writer’s block.
• Complete this sentence in 10 different ways: Patrick waited for the school bus and…
• Pick up a random book from your bookshelf and go to page 9. Find the ninth sentence on that page. Use this sentence as a story starter.
• Create a character profile based on all the traits that you hate. It might help to list down all the traits first and then work on describing the character.
• What is the scariest or most dangerous situation you have ever been in? Why was this situation scary? How did you cope at that moment?
• Pretend that you’re a chat show host and you’re interviewing your favourite celebrity. Write down the script for this conversation.
• Using extreme detail, write down what you have been doing for the past one hour today. Think about your thoughts, feelings and actions during this time.
• Make a list of potential character names for your next story. You can use a fantasy name generator to help you.
• Describe a futuristic setting. What do you think the world would look like in 100 years time?
• Think about a recent argument you had with someone. Would you change anything about it? How would you resolve an argument in the future?
• Describe a fantasy world. What kind of creatures live in this world? What is the climate like? What everyday challenges would a typical citizen of this world face? You can use this fantasy world name generator for inspiration.
• At the flip of a switch, you turn into a dragon. What kind of dragon would you be? Describe your appearance, special abilities, likes and dislikes. You can use a dragon name generator to give yourself a cool dragon name.
• Pick your favourite book or a famous story. Now change the point of view. For example, you could rewrite the fairytale , Cinderella. This time around, Prince Charming could be the main character. What do you think Prince Charming was doing, while Cinderella was cleaning the floors and getting ready for the ball?
• Pick a random writing prompt and use it to write a short story. Check out this collection of over 300 writing prompts for kids to inspire you. 
• Write a shopping list for a famous character in history. Imagine if you were Albert Einstein’s assistant, what kind of things would he shop for on a weekly basis?
• Create a fake advertisement poster for a random object that is near you right now. Your goal is to convince the reader to buy this object from you.
• What is the worst (or most annoying) sound that you can imagine? Describe this sound in great detail, so your reader can understand the pain you feel when hearing this sound.
• What is your favourite song at the moment? Pick one line from this song and describe a moment in your life that relates to this line.
•  You’re hosting an imaginary dinner party at your house. Create a list of people you would invite, and some party invites. Think about the theme of the dinner party, the food you will serve and entertainment for the evening. 
• You are waiting to see your dentist in the waiting room. Write down every thought you are having at this moment in time. 
• Make a list of your greatest fears. Try to think of at least three fears. Now write a short story about a character who is forced to confront one of these fears. 
• Create a ‘Wanted’ poster for a famous villain of your choice. Think about the crimes they have committed, and the reward you will give for having them caught. 
• Imagine you are a journalist for the ‘Imagine Forest Times’ newspaper. Your task is to get an exclusive interview with the most famous villain of all time. Pick a villain of your choice and interview them for your newspaper article. What questions would you ask them, and what would their responses be?
•  In a school playground, you see the school bully hurting a new kid. Write three short stories, one from each perspective in this scenario (The bully, the witness and the kid getting bullied).
• You just won $10 million dollars. What would you spend this money on?
• Pick a random animal, and research at least five interesting facts about this animal. Write a short story centred around one of these interesting facts. 
• Pick a global issue that you are passionate about. This could be climate change, black lives matters, women’s rights etc. Now create a campaign poster for this global issue. 
• Write an acrostic poem about an object near you right now (or even your own name). You could use a poetry idea generator to inspire you.
• Imagine you are the head chef of a 5-star restaurant. Recently the business has slowed down. Your task is to come up with a brand-new menu to excite customers. Watch this video prompt on YouTube to inspire you.
• What is your favourite food of all time? Imagine if this piece of food was alive, what would it say to you?
• If life was one big musical, what would you be singing about right now? Write the lyrics of your song. 
• Create and describe the most ultimate villain of all time. What would their traits be? What would their past look like? Will they have any positive traits?
• Complete this sentence in at least 10 different ways: Every time I look out of the window, I…
• You have just made it into the local newspaper, but what for? Write down at least five potential newspaper headlines . Here’s an example, Local Boy Survives a Deadly Illness.
• If you were a witch or a wizard, what would your specialist area be and why? You might want to use a Harry Potter name generator or a witch name generator for inspiration.
• What is your favourite thing to do on a Saturday night? Write a short story centred around this activity. 
• Your main character has just received the following items: A highlighter, a red cap, a teddy bear and a fork. What would your character do with these items? Can you write a story using these items? 
• Create a timeline of your own life, from birth to this current moment. Think about the key events in your life, such as birthdays, graduations, weddings and so on. After you have done this, you can pick one key event from your life to write a story about. 
• Think of a famous book or movie you like. Rewrite a scene from this book or movie, where the main character is an outsider. They watch the key events play out, but have no role in the story. What would their actions be? How would they react?
• Three very different characters have just won the lottery. Write a script for each character, as they reveal the big news to their best friend.  
• Write a day in the life story of three different characters. How does each character start their day? What do they do throughout the day? And how does their day end?
•  Write about the worst experience in your life so far. Think about a time when you were most upset or angry and describe it. 
• Imagine you’ve found a time machine in your house. What year would you travel to and why?
• Describe your own superhero. Think about their appearance, special abilities and their superhero name. Will they have a secret identity? Who is their number one enemy?
• What is your favourite country in the world? Research five fun facts about this country and use one to write a short story. 
• Set yourself at least three writing goals. This could be a good way to motivate yourself to write every day. For example, one goal might be to write at least 150 words a day. 
• Create a character description based on the one fact, three fiction rule. Think about one fact or truth about yourself. And then add in three fictional or fantasy elements. For example, your character could be the same age as you in real life, this is your one fact. And the three fictional elements could be they have the ability to fly, talk in over 100 different languages and have green skin. 
• Describe the perfect person. What traits would they have? Think about their appearance, their interests and their dislikes. 
• Keep a daily journal or diary. This is a great way to keep writing every day. There are lots of things you can write about in your journal, such as you can write about the ‘highs’ and ‘lows’ of your day. Think about anything that inspired you or anything that upset you, or just write anything that comes to mind at the moment. 
• Write a book review or a movie review. If you’re lost for inspiration, just watch a random movie or read any book that you can find. Then write a critical review on it. Think about the best parts of the book/movie and the worst parts. How would you improve the book or movie?
• Write down a conversation between yourself. You can imagine talking to your younger self or future self (i.e. in 10 years’ time). What would you tell them? Are there any lessons you learned or warnings you need to give? Maybe you could talk about what your life is like now and compare it to their life?
• Try writing some quick flash fiction stories . Flash fiction is normally around 500 words long, so try to stay within this limit.
• Write a six-word story about something that happened to you today or yesterday. A six-word story is basically an entire story told in just six words. Take for example: “Another football game ruined by me.” or “A dog’s painting sold for millions.” – Six-word stories are similar to writing newspaper headlines. The goal is to summarise your story in just six words. 
• The most common monsters or creatures used in stories include vampires, werewolves , dragons, the bigfoot, sirens and the loch-ness monster. In a battle of intelligence, who do you think will win and why?
• Think about an important event in your life that has happened so far, such as a birthday or the birth of a new sibling. Now using the 5 W’s and 1 H technique describe this event in great detail. The 5 W’s include: What, Who, Where, Why, When and the 1 H is: How. Ask yourself questions about the event, such as what exactly happened on that day? Who was there? Why was this event important? When and where did it happen? And finally, how did it make you feel?
• Pretend to be someone else. Think about someone important in your life. Now put yourself into their shoes, and write a day in the life story about being them. What do you think they do on a daily basis? What situations would they encounter? How would they feel?
• Complete this sentence in at least 10 different ways: I remember…
• Write about your dream holiday. Where would you go? Who would you go with? And what kind of activities would you do?
• Which one item in your house do you use the most? Is it the television, computer, mobile phone, the sofa or the microwave? Now write a story of how this item was invented. You might want to do some research online and use these ideas to build up your story. 
• In exactly 100 words, describe your bedroom. Try not to go over or under this word limit.
• Make a top ten list of your favourite animals. Based on this list create your own animal fact file, where you provide fun facts about each animal in your list.
• What is your favourite scene from a book or a movie? Write down this scene. Now rewrite the scene in a different genre, such as horror, comedy, drama etc.
•  Change the main character of a story you recently read into a villain. For example, you could take a popular fairytale such as Jack and the Beanstalk, but this time re-write the story to make Jack the villain of the tale.
• Complete the following sentence in at least 10 different ways: Do you ever wonder…
• What does your name mean? Research the meaning of your own name, or a name that interests you. Then use this as inspiration for your next story. For example, the name ‘Marty’ means “Servant Of Mars, God Of War”. This could make a good concept for a sci-fi story.
• Make a list of three different types of heroes (or main characters) for potential future stories.
• If someone gave you $10 dollars, what would you spend it on and why?
• Describe the world’s most boring character in at least 100 words. 
• What is the biggest problem in the world today, and how can you help fix this issue?
• Create your own travel brochure for your hometown. Think about why tourists might want to visit your hometown. What is your town’s history? What kind of activities can you do? You could even research some interesting facts. 
• Make a list of all your favourite moments or memories in your life. Now pick one to write a short story about.
• Describe the scariest and ugliest monster you can imagine. You could even draw a picture of this monster with your description.
• Write seven haikus, one for each colour of the rainbow. That’s red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. 
• Imagine you are at the supermarket. Write down at least three funny scenarios that could happen to you at the supermarket. Use one for your next short story. 
• Imagine your main character is at home staring at a photograph. Write the saddest scene possible. Your goal is to make your reader cry when reading this scene. 
• What is happiness? In at least 150 words describe the feeling of happiness. You could use examples from your own life of when you felt happy.
• Think of a recent nightmare you had and write down everything you can remember. Use this nightmare as inspiration for your next story.
• Keep a dream journal. Every time you wake up in the middle of the night or early in the morning you can quickly jot down things that you remember from your dreams. These notes can then be used as inspiration for a short story. 
• Your main character is having a really bad day. Describe this bad day and the series of events they experience. What’s the worst thing that could happen to your character?
• You find a box on your doorstep. You open this box and see the most amazing thing ever. Describe this amazing thing to your readers.
• Make a list of at least five possible settings or locations for future stories. Remember to describe each setting in detail.
• Think of something new you recently learned. Write this down. Now write a short story where your main character also learns the same thing.
• Describe the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen in your whole life. Your goal is to amaze your readers with its beauty. 
• Make a list of things that make you happy or cheer you up. Try to think of at least five ideas. Now imagine living in a world where all these things were banned or against the law. Use this as inspiration for your next story.
• Would you rather be rich and alone or poor and very popular? Write a story based on the lives of these two characters. 
• Imagine your main character is a Librarian. Write down at least three dark secrets they might have. Remember, the best secrets are always unexpected.
• There’s a history behind everything. Describe the history of your house. How and when was your house built? Think about the land it was built on and the people that may have lived here long before you.
• Imagine that you are the king or queen of a beautiful kingdom. Describe your kingdom in great detail. What kind of rules would you have? Would you be a kind ruler or an evil ruler of the kingdom?
• Make a wish list of at least three objects you wish you owned right now. Now use these three items in your next story. At least one of them must be the main prop in the story.
• Using nothing but the sense of taste, describe a nice Sunday afternoon at your house. Remember you can’t use your other senses (i.e see, hear, smell or touch) in this description. 
• What’s the worst pain you felt in your life? Describe this pain in great detail, so your readers can also feel it.
• If you were lost on a deserted island in the middle of nowhere, what three must-have things would you pack and why?
• Particpate in online writing challenges or contests. Here at Imagine Forest, we offer daily writing challenges with a new prompt added every day to inspire you. Check out our challenges section in the menu.

Do you have any more fun creative writing exercises to share? Let us know in the comments below!

Marty the wizard is the master of Imagine Forest. When he's not reading a ton of books or writing some of his own tales, he loves to be surrounded by the magical creatures that live in Imagine Forest. While living in his tree house he has devoted his time to helping children around the world with their writing skills and creativity.

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The science behind creativity

Psychologists and neuroscientists are exploring where creativity comes from and how to increase your own

Vol. 53 No. 3 Print version: page 40

• Neuropsychology
• Creativity and Innovation

Paul Seli, PhD, is falling asleep. As he nods off, a sleep-tracking glove called Dormio, developed by scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, detects his nascent sleep state and jars him awake. Pulled back from the brink, he jots down the artistic ideas that came to him during those semilucid moments.

Seli is an assistant professor of psychology and neuroscience at the Duke Institute for Brain Sciences and also an artist. He uses Dormio to tap into the world of hypnagogia, the transitional state that exists at the boundary between wakefulness and sleep. In a mini-experiment, he created a series of paintings inspired by ideas plucked from his hypnagogic state and another series from ideas that came to him during waking hours. Then he asked friends to rate how creative the paintings were, without telling them which were which. They judged the hypnagogic paintings as significantly more creative. “In dream states, we seem to be able to link things together that we normally wouldn’t connect,” Seli said. “It’s like there’s an artist in my brain that I get to know through hypnagogia.”

The experiment is one of many novel—and, yes, creative—ways that psychologists are studying the science of creativity. At an individual level, creativity can lead to personal fulfillment and positive academic and professional outcomes, and even be therapeutic. People take pleasure in creative thoughts, research suggests—even if they don’t think of themselves as especially creative. Beyond those individual benefits, creativity is an endeavor with implications for society, said Jonathan Schooler, PhD, a professor of psychological and brain sciences at the University of California, Santa Barbara. “Creativity is at the core of innovation. We rely on innovation for advancing humanity, as well as for pleasure and entertainment,” he said. “Creativity underlies so much of what humans value.”

In 1950, J. P. Guilford, PhD, then president of APA, laid out his vision for the psychological study of creativity ( American Psychologist , Vol. 5, No. 9, 1950). For half a century, researchers added to the scientific understanding of creativity incrementally, said John Kounios, PhD, an experimental psychologist who studies creativity and insight at Drexel University in Philadelphia. Much of that research focused on the personality traits linked to creativity and the cognitive aspects of the creative process.

But in the 21st century, the field has blossomed thanks to new advances in neuroimaging. “It’s become a tsunami of people studying creativity,” Kounios said. Psychologists and neuroscientists are uncovering new details about what it means to be creative and how to nurture that skill. “Creativity is of incredible real-world value,” Kounios said. “The ultimate goal is to figure out how to enhance it in a systematic way.”

Creativity in the brain

What, exactly, is creativity? The standard definition used by researchers characterizes creative ideas as those that are original and effective, as described by psychologist Mark A. Runco, PhD, director of creativity research and programming at Southern Oregon University ( Creativity Research Journal , Vol. 24, No. 1, 2012). But effectiveness, also called utility, is a slippery concept. Is a poem useful? What makes a sculpture effective? “Most researchers use some form of this definition, but most of us are also dissatisfied with it,” Kounios said.

Runco is working on an updated definition and has considered at least a dozen suggestions from colleagues for new components to consider. One frequently suggested feature is authenticity. “Creativity involves an honest expression,” he said.

Meanwhile, scientists are also struggling with the best way to measure the concept. As a marker of creativity, researchers often measure divergent thinking—the ability to generate a lot of possible solutions to a problem or question. The standard test of divergent thinking came from Guilford himself. Known as the alternate-uses test, the task asks participants to come up with novel uses for a common object such as a brick. But measures of divergent thinking haven’t been found to correlate well with real-world creativity. Does coming up with new uses for a brick imply a person will be good at abstract art or composing music or devising new methods for studying the brain? “It strikes me as using way too broad a brush,” Seli said. “I don’t think we measure creativity in the standard way that people think about creativity. As researchers, we need to be very clear about what we mean.”

One way to do that may be to move away from defining creativity based on a person’s creative output and focus instead on what’s going on in the brain, said Adam Green, PhD, a cognitive neuroscientist at Georgetown University and founder of the Society for the Neuroscience of Creativity . “The standard definition, that creativity is novel and useful, is a description of a product,” he noted. “By looking inward, we can see the process in action and start to identify the characteristics of creative thought. Neuroimaging is helping to shift the focus from creative product to creative process.”

That process seems to involve the coupling of disparate brain regions. Specifically, creativity often involves coordination between the cognitive control network, which is involved in executive functions such as planning and problem-solving, and the default mode network, which is most active during mind-wandering or daydreaming (Beaty, R. E., et al., Cerebral Cortex , Vol. 31, No. 10, 2021). The cooperation of those networks may be a unique feature of creativity, Green said. “These two systems are usually antagonistic. They rarely work together, but creativity seems to be one instance where they do.”

Green has also found evidence that an area called the frontopolar cortex, in the brain’s frontal lobes, is associated with creative thinking. And stimulating the area seems to boost creative abilities. He and his colleagues used transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) to stimulate the frontopolar cortex of participants as they tried to come up with novel analogies. Stimulating the area led participants to make analogies that were more semantically distant from one another—in other words, more creative ( Cerebral Cortex , Vol. 27, No. 4, 2017).

Green’s work suggests that targeting specific areas in the brain, either with neuromodulation or cognitive interventions, could enhance creativity. Yet no one is suggesting that a single brain region, or even a single neural network, is responsible for creative thought. “Creativity is not one system but many different mechanisms that, under ideal circumstances, work together in a seamless way,” Kounios said.

In search of the eureka moment

Creativity looks different from person to person. And even within one brain, there are different routes to a creative spark, Kounios explained. One involves what cognitive scientists call “System 1” (also called “Type 1”) processes: quick, unconscious thoughts—aha moments—that burst into consciousness. A second route involves “System 2” processes: thinking that is slow, deliberate, and conscious. “Creativity can use one or the other or a combination of the two,” he said. “You might use Type 1 thinking to generate ideas and Type 2 to critique and refine them.”

Which pathway a person uses might depend, in part, on their expertise. Kounios and his colleagues used electroencephalography (EEG) to examine what was happening in jazz musicians’ brains as they improvised on the piano. Then skilled jazz instructors rated those improvisations for creativity, and the researchers compared each musician’s most creative compositions. They found that for highly experienced musicians, the mechanisms used to generate creative ideas were largely automatic and unconscious, and they came from the left posterior part of the brain. Less-experienced pianists drew on more analytical, deliberative brain processes in the right frontal region to devise creative melodies, as Kounios and colleagues described in a special issue of NeuroImage on the neuroscience of creativity (Vol. 213, 2020). “It seems there are at least two pathways to get from where you are to a creative idea,” he said.

Coming up with an idea is only one part of the creative process. A painter needs to translate their vision to canvas. An inventor has to tinker with their concept to make a prototype that actually works. Still, the aha moment is an undeniably important component of the creative process. And science is beginning to illuminate those “lightbulb moments.”

Kounios examined the relationship between creative insight and the brain’s reward system by asking participants to solve anagrams in the lab. In people who were highly sensitive to rewards, a creative insight led to a burst of brain activity in the orbitofrontal cortex, the area of the brain that responds to basic pleasures like delicious food or addictive drugs ( NeuroImage , Vol. 214, 2020). That neural reward may explain, from an evolutionary standpoint, why humans seem driven to create, he said. “We seem wired to take pleasure in creative thoughts. There are neural rewards for thinking in a creative fashion, and that may be adaptive for our species.”

The rush you get from an aha moment might also signal that you’re onto something good, Schooler said. He and his colleagues studied these flashes of insight among creative writers and physicists. They surveyed the participants daily for two weeks, asking them to note their creative ideas and when they occurred. Participants reported that about a fifth of the most important ideas of the day happened when they were mind-wandering and not working on a task at hand ( Psychological Science , Vol. 30, No. 3, 2019). “These solutions were more likely to be associated with an aha moment and often overcoming an impasse of some sort,” Schooler said.

Six months later, the participants revisited those ideas and rated them for creative importance. This time, they rated their previous ideas as creative, but less important than they’d initially thought. That suggests that the spark of a eureka moment may not be a reliable clue that an idea has legs. “It seems like the aha experience may be a visceral marker of an important idea. But the aha experience can also inflate the meaningfulness of an idea that doesn’t have merit,” Schooler said. “We have to be careful of false ahas.”

Boosting your creativity

Much of the research in this realm has focused on creativity as a trait. Indeed, some people are naturally more creative than others. Creative individuals are more likely than others to possess the personality trait of openness. “Across different age groups, the best predictor of creativity is openness to new experiences,” said Anna Abraham, PhD, the E. Paul Torrance Professor and director of the Torrance Center for Creativity and Talent Development at the University of Georgia. “Creative people have the kind of curiosity that draws them toward learning new things and experiencing the world in new ways,” she said.

We can’t all be Thomas Edison or Maya Angelou. But creativity is also a state, and anyone can push themselves to be more creative. “Creativity is human capacity, and there’s always room for growth,” Runco said. A tolerant environment is often a necessary ingredient, he added. “Tolerant societies allow individuals to express themselves and explore new things. And as a parent or a teacher, you can model that creativity is valued and be open-minded when your child gives an answer you didn’t expect.”

One way to let your own creativity flow may be by tapping into your untethered mind. Seli is attempting to do so through his studies on hypnagogia. After pilot testing the idea on himself, he’s now working on a study that uses the sleep-tracking glove to explore creativity in a group of Duke undergrads. “In dream states, there seems to be connectivity between disparate ideas. You tend to link things together you normally wouldn’t, and this should lead to novel outcomes,” he said. “Neurally speaking, the idea is to increase connectivity between different areas of the brain.”

You don’t have to be asleep to forge those creative connections. Mind-wandering can also let the ideas flow. “Letting yourself daydream with a purpose, on a regular basis, might allow brain networks that don’t usually cooperate to literally form stronger connections,” Green said.

However, not all types of daydreams will get you there. Schooler found that people who engage in more personally meaningful daydreams (such as fantasizing about a future vacation or career change) report greater artistic achievement and more daily inspiration. People who are prone to fantastical daydreaming (such as inventing alternate realities or imaginary worlds) produced higher-quality creative writing in the lab and reported more daily creative behavior. But daydreams devoted to planning or problem-solving were not associated with creative behaviors ( Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts , Vol. 15, No. 4, 2021).

It’s not just what you think about when you daydream, but where you are when you do it. Some research suggests spending time in nature can enhance creativity. That may be because of the natural world’s ability to restore attention, or perhaps it’s due to the tendency to let your mind wander when you’re in the great outdoors (Williams, K. J. H., et al., Journal of Environmental Psychology , Vol. 59, 2018). “A lot of creative figures go on walks in big, expansive environments. In a large space, your perceptual attention expands and your scope of thought also expands,” Kounios said. “That’s why working in a cubicle is bad for creativity. But working near a window can help.”

Wherever you choose to do it, fostering creativity requires time and effort. “People want the booster shot for creativity. But creativity isn’t something that comes magically. It’s a skill, and as with any new skill, the more you practice, the better you get,” Abraham said. In a not-yet-published study, she found three factors predicted peak originality in teenagers: openness to experience, intelligence, and, importantly, time spent engaged in creative hobbies. That is, taking the time to work on creative pursuits makes a difference. And the same is true for adults, she said. “Carve out time for yourself, figure out the conditions that are conducive to your creativity, and recognize that you need to keep pushing yourself. You won’t get to where you want to go if you don’t try.”

Those efforts can benefit your own sense of creative fulfillment and perhaps lead to rewards on an even grander scale. “I think everyday creativity is the most important kind,” Runco said. “If we can support the creativity of each and every individual, we’ll change the world.”

How to become more creative

1. Put in the work: People often think of creativity as a bolt of inspiration, like a lightbulb clicking on. But being creative in a particular domain—whether in the arts, in your work, or in your day-to-day life—is a skill. Carve out time to learn and practice.

2. Let your mind wander: Experts recommend “daydreaming with purpose.” Make opportunities to let your daydreams flow, while gently nudging them toward the creative challenge at hand. Some research suggests meditation may help people develop the habit of purposeful daydreaming.

3. Practice remote associations: Brainstorm ideas, jotting down whatever thoughts or notions come to you, no matter how wild. You can always edit later.

4. Go outside: Spending time in nature and wide-open spaces can expand your attention, enhance beneficial mind-wandering, and boost creativity.

5. Revisit your creative ideas: Aha moments can give you a high—but that rush might make you overestimate the merit of a creative idea. Don’t be afraid to revisit ideas to critique and tweak them later.

Further reading

Creativity: An introduction Kaufman, J. C., and Sternberg, R. J. (Eds.), Cambridge University Press, 2021

The eureka factor: Aha moments, creative insight, and the brain Kounios, J., & Beeman, M., Random House, 2015

Creativity anxiety: Evidence for anxiety that is specific to creative thinking, from STEM to the arts Daker, R. J., et al., Journal of Experimental Psychology: General , 2020

Predictors of creativity in young people: Using frequentist and Bayesian approaches in estimating the importance of individual and contextual factors Asquith, S. L., et al., Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts , 2020

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This Is Your Brain on Writing

By Carl Zimmer

• June 20, 2014

A novelist scrawling away in a notebook in seclusion may not seem to have much in common with an NBA player doing a reverse layup on a basketball court before a screaming crowd. But if you could peer inside their heads, you might see some striking similarities in how their brains were churning.

That’s one of the implications of new research on the neuroscience of creative writing. For the first time, neuroscientists have used fMRI scanners to track the brain activity of both experienced and novice writers as they sat down — or, in this case, lay down — to turn out a piece of fiction.

The researchers, led by Martin Lotze of the University of Greifswald in Germany, observed a broad network of regions in the brain working together as people produced their stories. But there were notable differences between the two groups of subjects. The inner workings of the professionally trained writers in the bunch, the scientists argue, showed some similarities to people who are skilled at other complex actions, like music or sports.

The research is drawing strong reactions. Some experts praise it as an important advance in understanding writing and creativity, while others criticize the research as too crude to reveal anything meaningful about the mysteries of literature or inspiration.

Dr. Lotze has long been intrigued by artistic expression. In previous studies, he has observed the brains of piano players and opera singers, using fMRI scanners to pinpoint regions that become unusually active in the brain.

Needless to say, that can be challenging when a subject is singing an aria. Scanners are a lot like 19th-century cameras: They can take very sharp pictures, if their subject remains still. To get accurate data, Dr. Lotze has developed software that can take into account fluctuations caused by breathing or head movements.

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How to Use Brain Waves to Enhance Your Writing Practice

Today’s post is by writer, speaker and coach  Lisa Cooper Ellison .

Insights are the juice of a writing life that take us from not knowing to a god-like understanding of our stories. They feel like a lightning striking inside you and often cause you to say things like a-ha and that’s it !

While you can’t crack your head open and press the insight button, you can set the stage for insights to happen, and for you to do more organized, heads-down work.

To get started, let’s look at how your brain waves work.

Brain waves 101

Your brain’s neurons emit electrical waves as they communicate with one another. The five brain waves, from slowest to fastest, are delta, theta, alpha, beta, and gamma. Understanding which ones support specific writing activities can not only enhance your writing life, it can prevent you from unwittingly robbing yourself of that precious juice.

Delta (1–4 Hz) is the slowest brain wave pattern. In adults, they occur during deep, dreamless sleep. When you get adequate deep sleep, you feel refreshed, focused, and ready to take on the day. Good sleep hygiene, which includes things writers might begrudge, like limiting caffeine after 2:00 p.m. (the horror!), shutting off electronics that emit blue light two hours before bed, and setting a regular bedtime, can improve how much deep sleep you get.

Theta waves (4–8 Hz) are the second slowest. They occur during REM sleep and play an essential role in memory formation. They also occur on the edge between sleep and awakening, and are sometimes seen as the gateway to the subconscious. This wave state is associated with creativity, intuition, daydreaming, and fantasizing.

Alpha waves (8–14 Hz) occur when we’re in a state of wakefulness but not really concentrating on anything. When your brain emits a healthy level of alpha waves, you’re more likely to feel relaxed and in a positive state, two things needed for insights to happen. According to neurofeedback practitioner  Jessica Eure,  “A healthy, robust alpha frequency allows us to tune in to ourselves and tune out the external world a bit while still being fully awake. This allows us to visualize things in our mind’s eye.”

Alpha and theta brain states are great for gathering ideas, making unique connections, or tuning in to what your subconscious has to say. That’s why Julia Cameron encourages writers to not just write in the morning, but to write as soon as you wake up. A groggy mind has access to those theta waves.

Beta waves (14–30 Hz) are fast and active. They occur when we’re in the wide awake state needed for focus and concentration. Harnessing your low beta waves (12–15 Hz) can help you organize your thoughts and increase your productivity. But sometimes we have too much beta, or the beta brain waves we experience are at higher frequencies. High beta states (14–40 Hz) are associated with stress, irritability, anxiety, worry, insomnia, racing thoughts, and being jumpy and hypervigilant. When we’re operating in high beta, the busyness of the brain can make it harder to focus.

Gamma waves (40–120 Hz) are the fastest of your brain waves. They coincide with periods of intense learning, problem solving, and decision making. They also appear alongside alpha and theta during states of flow.

Many factors affect the composition of our brain waves, including genetics, head injuries, illnesses, trauma, stress, and even the medications we take. You can’t reprogram your brain to have more or less of a specific brainwave without treatments like neurofeedback or strict, often hours long, meditation practices, but you can make the most of what you have by engaging the right brain waves for the appropriate writing task.

Capitalizing on your brain waves

For your brain to function properly, you need to take good care of it. According to Eure’s colleague, Dr. Rusty Turner, “The best things we can all do for our brains are exercise, eat well, disconnect from technology, and have good sleep hygiene.” That’s step one. Next, try to engage the brain waves best suited for your writing session.

If you’re generating new material, spend some time in your upper alpha or low beta brain wave states. This happens when you’re relaxed and feeling both wide awake and focused. (More on how to do this in a minute.)

After generating and revising that new material into something that makes sense, you’ll need to figure out what it means, why it’s significant, and how it connects to other things you’ve written. You can’t force these insights to happen by poring over your work. That’s because the more you focus on a problem, the more you worry about it, which engages your high beta waves. Instead, step away from your work and focus on engaging your alpha waves, with the occasional help from theta. This is where morning pages can come in handy. While Julia Cameron sees them as an emptying of the trash so you can get to real writing, giving yourself permission to wander into story territory soon after waking might help you solve your work-in-progress’s biggest problems.

Meditation is often touted as the way to prep your brain for writing. That’s because meditation calms the brain and encourages alpha and theta wave brain states. But meditation doesn’t work for everyone. In fact, it can be detrimental to trauma survivors and can feel like failure for anyone whose brain has a lot of spindly high beta waves.

If this is you, skip the meditation and instead focus on breathing activities like  alternate nostril breathing . This exercise will engage the parasympathetic nervous system, which helps with the formation of alpha waves. Other activities that can help you engage in alpha wave states include warming your hands and feet, getting a massage, taking a shower, and walking in nature.

For editing activities that require a high level of wide-awake focus, give your low beta waves free rein. If you’re getting enough sleep, all you’ll need to do is take a walk, especially on a brisk day, to wake your brain up.

If you’re working on a large-scale problem that requires deep focus, gamma waves are your ally. While the best way to access them is sustained long-form meditation, there’s a hack you can use to access this and other brain states: binaural beats.

Binaural beats are two tones set to specific frequencies, or hertz, that you listen to simultaneously. Studies show that listening to binaural beats can help you temporarily access specific brain waves, though this doesn’t teach your brain to go there on its own.

While you can purchase a  binaural beat app , a simple YouTube search will give you plenty of options. To see if binaural beats are right for you, do the following:

• Grab a set of stereo headphones.
• Choose a playlist set to the frequency best suited to your task.
• Listen for approximately 30 minutes while you’re doing a set task.
• Notice how you feel. If it’s helping, keep it up. But if you feel agitated, unfocused, or depressed, that doesn’t mean you’re doing it wrong. It just means that frequency isn’t right for you.

I personally like binaural beats set to music, though others feel best when all they hear are the specific tones. Mixing it up helps me maximize my brain waves and harness those juicy insights that keep me at my writing desk. My current favorites are this  gamma wave mix  for hard core editing, and a dreamier  cognition enhancer when I want to find the stillness needed to create new work. If you give this a try, leave a note in the comments to let me know what you discovered and how this affected our writing process.

Lisa Cooper Ellison is an author, speaker, trauma-informed writing coach, and host of the Writing Your Resilience podcast. She works and writes at the intersection of storytelling and healing, and uses both her personal experiences and clinical training to help writers turn tough experiences into art. Lisa’s essays and stories have appeared on  Risk!  and in  The New York Times , HuffPost ,  Hippocampus Literary Magazine , and  Kenyon Review Online , among others.

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Excellent and important information here for all writers. I used to be frustrated by early morning waking (when I had kids and a consulting gig). I’m at work on my third novel these days and even if I went to bed after midnight because I’m watching baseball playoffs more often than not my little noggin elbows me up around 5 AM and starts in with the character notions and weird plot ideas. One thing I do on days where I’ve only had sleep for a while is ride that alpha-theta mix with a mid-morning nap and then again a short siesta after lunch plugged into some funky theta wave beats on my headphones.

Love the idea of gamma waves for focused editing. Thanks so much for all of this!

Thanks for sharing your excellent strategies. Sounds like they’ve served you well. Have fun accessing your gamma waves. 😊

Excellent article! It answers a number of questions for me. Thanks for sharing this, and I’m sure I’ll be re-reading it a number of times!

I’m so glad you enjoyed it, Nancy! 😊

This is brilliant, Lisa! I’m going to recommend that all of my coaching clients dig into the brainhacks you’re sharing here.

Thanks, Susan! That means so much coming from you. ❤️

For me this is a very timely article. I have had to put my literary efforts on hold as I have been recovering from a concussion. To calm my brain I have been crocheting Granny Squares as a form of self – imposed occupational therapy. It is very gentle and rhythmic – just keep counting to three and every so often change colours ! I find it very addictive and have spent many days sitting for 8 hours at a time in a deep state of relaxation and have been sleeping very well. As an extra bonus I have produced 3 baby blankets and tidied up my wool collection !!! I would love to be able to get directly to this state once I run out of wool.

I love that your giving your brain time to heal. It’s such a discipline! And kudos for finding another creative outlet. I’m so impressed with your productivity! ❤️

Interesting. Has any research been done to see whether these categories fit in with the vagaries of the neuro-divergent brain? I have ADHD, and my brain is feverishly active nearly all the time. When something new and interesting grabs me, I can immerse myself in it for hours at a time; but when I’m bored, concentration flies out of the window.

It appears that many people with ADHD have an over abundance of theta and high beta. Check out your this link and try binaural beats in the alpha and low beta range.

https://neurogrow.com/can-neurofeedback-effectively-treat-adhd/#:~:text=Most%20patients%20with%20ADHD%20brains,to%20normalize%20their%20brain%20waves .

This was fascinating. I’ve got to turn this into an infographic or something to keep by my desk. Thank you!

I’m so glad you enjoyed it. I love the idea of an infographic for this.

I love this tool and your breakdown, Lisa. I just hopped over to the 2 sets you recommended at the end of this article and saved them. Thank you!

I’m so glad you enjoyed it, Shoshana! ❤️

This article is fascinating. I don’t know the connections between the music I like and the work I’ve done – I listened to music throughout my school years, in particular classical, usually instrumental only. I will soon be sharing this article with the senior writing group that three other women and I facilitate in our town.

When I was in college (50+ years ago), I noticed that I could write while listening to bagpipe music, but I could not read to it. Bagpipe music is an aggressive call to action: writing is active, while reading is not. That’s how I explained it to myself.

Another curious thing I noticed at that time was: I could study in a small room but not in a large one with high ceilings (like a library). It was as if, in a large room, my thoughts had too much space to wander around, when I needed to keep them close at hand (or at brain).

Thanks for sharing your observations with all of us. This is such fascinating work! I bet that the classical pieces you listened to included some resonant frequency your brain liked, unlike the bagpipes which were motivating but not necessarily in a way that led to creative progress. I’m so honored that you’ll be sharing this article with your writing group. I hope it sparks some great conversations or new ways to use these concepts that neither one of us have considered. Happy writing and happy listening! 🙂

Hey hey! Thank you for the information here. I am working on building some audio tracks for journalling, and i created one that starts with 5 minutes of alpha wave, then 10 minutes of theta wave, then 15 minutes of beta wave. Each section has a looping simple melody over it. It’s not so much about being a great song or anything, more like a soft timer with assisted binaural transitions to help you keep time. it might be helpful for writers interested in this 🙂

https://soundcloud.com/dj-tikka-masala/binaural-journalling-soundtrack-5-10-15

That’s so cool, DJ Tikka Masala. What I love most about this is that the time frame aligns with our attention spans. Thanks for creating this.

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