Story Is A State of Mind: Writing and the Art of Creative Curiosity

How you create a book and how you create a life follow the same general process: you set out with an intention and move toward resolution. You may hold a vision of an outcome in your mind, but you don’t know exactly how to navigate your way there. You pay attention and try to make good decisions. You show up regularly, course-correcting as you go.

Practice

You feel anxious, depressed, ungrounded, or distressed when you’re not actively writing.

The adventure can still get gnarly, though, even when you’re listening to your true nature. Clues that you’re writing with creative curiosity: You feel like you’re doing it wrong. You feel out of your depth. After you write a fresh, fun part, the sparkly feeling wanes. You have no idea what to do or where to go next.

journal: make a simple list titled Creative Curiosity.

Creative curiosity loves to make something out of nothing.

wish there was a better word to evoke the delicious and complex experience of the whole-minded state. This is a state of integrated awareness where you can sense the internal signals from your body, like your heartbeat and breathing, at the same time as the signals coming from your external environment, like the smell of popcorn and the sound and v

Our creative practices work even when we don’t believe they will. This is the power of showing up and engaging with them: They can guide us, surprise us, and create change, despite ourselves. We show up, we practise, and we open ourselves to new possibilities.

Your story is asking you to remain curious about what you discover as you explore the unknown.