Optional Interview with Writing Coach Daphne Gray-Grant

Daphne Gray-Grant grew up in the newspaper business.

Her father owned a struggling weekly paper in Vancouver, Canada.

While going to highschool and college she worked there until she graduated and for a few more years.

Then she became a senior editor at a large metropolitan daily where she worked for about eight years.

Following that she became pregnant with triplets and decided she still didn’t have nearly enough work.

She wanted to be self employed so, the Publication Coach was born.

Interestingly Daphne says that she struggled with writers block during all of her years of newspapering and didn’t address the problem until she started her own business.

She’s also the author of the popular book, Eight and a Half Steps to Writing Faster, Better.

Through her website, www.publicationcoach.com she offers the weekly newsletter, Power Writing.

It’s weekly, brief, and best of all, it’s free.

I’ve been a subscriber for years myself and I encourage you to sign up as well.

Meanwhile, it’s my great pleasure to welcome Daphne here today. Daphne you’re a professional writing coach. Tell me about your own past struggles with writer’s block.

Well, you know, the interesting thing for me is that I struggled enormously with writing, even when I was a professional reporter at a daily newspaper. Now you might think, how can someone who works at a daily newspaper have writer’s block? Didn’t you have to write every day? But the thing is, I was a born editor, and when I worked in newspapers, I did a little bit of writing and mostly editing. And I loved editing.

I’ve always loved editing and the few times when I had to write when I worked for the daily newspaper.

I found it very stressful and extremely difficult.

Partly I guess because I was an editor and so I was a little bit embarrassed about how slow a writer I was. But also because I hadn’t really learned the tricks and techniques I’ve since learned to make writing faster, easier and better.

Well, I think we’ll be talking about some of those tricks. And one of the ways I think that we might talk about that is just, how did you teach your triplets to write. Did you use some of those tricks?

Well, you know, I taught my triplets to do many things, they’re 20 years old now, and they’re all at university which is great.

They’re so different you’d barely know they were siblings, nevermind triplets. I don’t know whether it would be fair to say I taught them to write, but I certainly gave them some of the tricks and techniques I give my own clients, and they too have found them very helpful.

Well, let’s hone in on one of those tricks. I mean, how would you describe the difference between diffuse mode and focused mode when you’re thinking about and when it comes to writing?

Yeah, that’s, that’s a really, really important point because, for me the diffuse mode I call that the creative or writing mode. And the focus mode I call the editing brain.

And what, one of the big mistakes that many people make when they’re writing is they try to write with their editing brain.

And the metaphor I like to use is I say, imagine that these two different parts of your brain are like two different people, and now put them in a car. What do you know about that? Only one person can drive. So if you’re critical or focused brain is driving your diffused brain is asleep in the back seat. And that’s not what anyone wants when they’re writing.

You want your diffused brain to be active and awake, to be the one that’s driving when you’re writing. And so one of the techniques I like to use to help people engage their diffused brain is mind mapping. Now the important thing about mind mapping is its a little bit different from concept mapping and I don’t know too much about concept mapping because I’m not am academic myself.

But mind mapping, which is also called clustering, some people may know it by that name instead, is where you take a piece of paper and you turn it sideways and that’s really, really important.

Having the paper sideways is essential because what that does is that kind of liberates your brain. And it says oh, I can go off in any direction. If you, if you have the paper in the sort of standard 8/5 by 111 way, that going to make your brain think you need to write a list or worse, an outline.

And I really encourage students, in particular, not to outline before writing. And I know this flies in the face of what many Grade 10 English teachers will counsel you to do but the thing is, if you think about it, outlining engages your focused brain.

That’s the part of the brain that’s good at spelling and grammar and alphabetical order and sort of very specific tasks and when you’re writing, you want to create. You want to think of things. You want to make new connections. And that’s where you really need the diffused brain. So to mind map take that piece of paper, turn it sideways and write the topic in the center of the page. Then draw a circle around it. And once you’ve drawn that circle around it, then just write whatever springs into your brain. The thing I also like to say, and people find this a little bit gross sometimes, but I say its kind of like vomiting onto the page.

So, Don’t criticize yourself, don’t second guess any of those ideas that occurs to brain then write it down. So I did a mind map some years ago and I use this when I’m teaching mind mapping all the time. And I did it on the first day of school.

I, I don’t mean I wrote the mind map on the first day of school. I wrote the mind map about the first day of school. So what I wrote in the center of the page was first day of school. And part of the reason I picked this topic was because it breaks very neatly into some obvious marking points.

So one is grade one, one is high school, one is university.

So you can have different first days of school tied to those events.

So then I wrote those down and you’ll see I’ve marked them with little cross hatches.

I did that after the fact just so that when you look at the mind map you can see this easily.

And then if you look you’ll see next to the one I’ve marked grade one in the top right hand corner.

I’ve written the words bee sting. Now what does a bee sting have to do with a first day of grade one? Well, when I went to grade one, first day of school I’m standing in the school yard with my mother and I got stung on the lip by a bee. I will never ever forget that moment. For me first day of school will always be linked with being stung by a bee right there on the lip. So all I have to write is two words, bee sting. And everything comes back to me. I can picture the spot, the exact spot in the playground where I was standing.

I can remember the crabby old nun who came up to me and said what are you making such a big deal about because I was crying. You know, so its almost like a movie I can play in my own brain just based on those two words.

Now one of the questions I often get when I talk about this is people say well, I can see how mind mapping would be very useful for fiction and I can see how it might even be useful for memoire. But what does it have to do with non fiction? And I have to say that I use mind mapping everyday of my writing life and I have never written any fiction. Ever. So I use it entirely for non fiction.

And what you can do is when you interview someone and you take your notes, then you put the notes aside and you do the mind map based on your memory of that interview. And the things that are most interesting, I guarantee your brain will remember.

Now, for university students, the issue’s going to be a bit different because you’re, it’s less likely you’re gong to be interviewing a bunch of people. It’s more likely you’re going to be reading a bunch of books, but the same principle applies.

If there is something that is really interesting to you and important and integral to your research, you’re likely to remember that. And the things that are most important are going to float to the top of your memory. So you will remember them and then you can mind map about them.

Well, this is very interesting because it’s related to the techniques that brilliant Nobel Prize winning neuroscientist Santiago Ramon Cajal used when he was trying to really understand what was going on at an anatomical level.

He would look very carefully at the cells he was watching in his microscope, and then we would turn and he would try to draw them, and and he would draw and re-draw.

Until he, he had abstracted the key chunks that stuck in his memory from when he was looking at them with the camera, with the microscope, versus when he was trying to draw them on the page. So in some sense, it seems what you’re doing is, is to try and abstract the key ideas that have somehow crystalized in your mind through using the mind mapping technique.

That, that’s a really, really good way of putting it. Yeah, and, and, you know, it’s, it interests me. In terms of education these days, I think we are down playing a bit the value of memory. And, you know, I don’t know about you but I have all my phone numbers entered into my iPhone.

I don’t remember a phone number anymore to save my life. And, and people don’t memorize poetry anymore and, you know, there’s all sorts of things that used to be part of the regular day to day life and regular school life that aren’t there so much anymore.

And so I think we’re a little bit weary forcing ourselves to rely on our memory at all. But the thing that strikes me about mind mapping is that if something is interesting or important to you, you’re going to remember it. At least you’re going to remember it well enough to mind map it. And then, you know, of course when you get to the point where you have to do citations, of course you have to look it up. You have to get that 100% right, or you’re, you know, quoting someone else, you, you need to check it, word for word. But for doing the mind map, for inspiring yourself to write, you’re not needing that kind of 100% accuracy, you’re just needing the inspiration. And that’s what mind mapping is so valuable for.

I couldn’t agree more and I also couldn’t agree more about the importance of memory. I think what we’ve done is.

Mistakenly by, by thinking, well, memorization can be sometimes a bad thing if you’re just sitting there memorizing things without understanding them, but we’ve thrown the baby out with the bath water.

We’ve said memorization is always bad.

And that’s actually not true. I mean great poets have said memorize a poem because it helps you to, to understand the underlying meaning much more deeply.

And in the same way, when you memorize for example an equation. It can help you understand that poetic under tone that underlies the equation and, and that’s often lost.

But I have to bring out another something you’ve alluded to in the past, and that’s simply the idea of when you’re trying to get into that diffuse mode and I’m saying this a little bit metaphorically because we haven’t truly analyzed what’s going on.

But, but that, that mode where you’re stepping back a little bit and you’re not focusing completely and intently.

But and you’re trying to get something down on a page. That sometimes in order to avoid that editorial mode, the best thing to do is to cover up your screen with a, a towel or something like that.

And that, that helps prevent you from going back and trying to edit what you just wrote and just get it out onto the page.

Oh, absolutely. You know that is the number one mistake. That most students and you know, not even students. You don’t have to be a student to make this mistake. Most beginning writers make is they edit while they write. And I like to say that that’s kind of like trying to clear the table while you’re still eating dinner.

It just doesn’t work very well and one of the tricks I suggest to people if they’ve developed this habit is that they turn off their monitor while they’re writing.

So you, of course you need to be a touch typist to be able to do that, but if you are a touch typists, then turn of your monitor and if that feels to drastic, or if you have a Mac that doesn’t let you turn of your monitor separately, then just hang a towel over it, and write without looking at what you’re reading.

So, you know, I wrote for probably 40, more than 40, 40 years.

While I edited constantly while I wrote.

And that was so dysfunctional and so bad for me, and it slowed me down so much and made writing so difficult and traumatic that I finally made the decision that I had to break that habit. And so I started turning off my monitor. I tried some other things as well that also really helped.

There’s a great app. Up on the internet called write or die.

So it’s write or die dot com.

And if you scroll down that screen a little bit, then you’ll get to an area where you can enter the number of words you want to write and enter a time limit for yourself. And then you press a button that says, I can’t remember what it says, but something like start.

And then you get a blank screen and you start to write. And what happens is, what inevitably happens is we all, will write a few words and then we stop and we look off and stare into space while we’re trying to plan what to write next. And what happens is the software notices we’re not typing and after X number of seconds, I think it’s about 10 seconds, of not moving the keyboard at all then, the screen starts to pinken. And I like to compare it to a blush.

because the screen’s embarrassed for you. And it gets pinker and pinker and pinker the longer you go without writing.

And I haven’t timed this in a long time so I can’t remember exactly the time limit it gives you.

Let’s say it’s 20 seconds.

If you’ve gone 20 seconds without writing at all then you get a loud punishing noise.

So its either a crying baby, a car alarm, or 70’s disco music. I’ll leave it to you to decide which is worse. But its a, it’s a very clever technique for teaching you to break the habit of editing while you write.

I’ve used Write or Die myself and I think it does work very, very well. I love this approach of separating your editing from your actual writing.

For me, what I sometimes find is, when I’m out, I’ll think of something and I’m about to put it down, and then I think oh, that’s terrible.

I, I can’t write that and then I’m editing in my head before I’m writing and when I stop that, when I just say okay, I ought to get that out.

Hey, that’s terrible, but that’s the way it is.

It’s going to come out on the page terrible.

I’m so surprised later when I look back, and I find hey, you know what? That actually wasn’t as terrible as I thought.

In fact, it got me started and, and it’s pretty good.

Yes, yes. That, that happens to so many people.

and, and, you know, I have to tell you, I have, I’ve taught writing for so many years now.

I can tell you that when I talk to people about that nasty little editing voice that’s in the back of all our brains, we all have that voice and it says the same thing to all of us.

It says things like this is no good. My boss, or teacher, is going to hate this.

This is boring. This is really, really bad. The, that, that voice says really negative essentially unhelpful things to all of us. We’re all in the same boat. So what I like to do, is I like to talk back to that voice.

And I say things like, could you shut up for a minute? I don’t have time to talk right now.

I will talk to you when I’m editing. But I’m writing right now, I’m too busy.

And if you can be conscious of that voice and talk back to it rather than just let it yammer in your ear, then you are better off.

So I think the number one technique for dealing with that, is just recognizing that it’s happening, recognize, recognizing that it happens to everyone, and taking some steps to deal with it.

Well, I thank you so much, Daphne.

This was so useful, and a fantastic reminder, even for me.

I want to encourage everyone out there to please go ahead and explore signing up for your for Daphne’s free newsletter which is at www.publicationcoach.com. I’m a subscriber as well.

And maybe even take a look at her great book Eight and a Half Steps to writing Faster better or Daphne’s email course which is called “Extreme Writing Makeover”. So thank you so much again Daphne and we’ll see you on the flip side.

Thanks Barb. Nice talking to you.