I was watching the US Olympic trials, and the man who won the steeplechase, Kenneth Rooks, said that to prepare, he "just tried to be curious about the race."
Curiosity as a quality might seem a bit tepid, halfway between "I need to know" and "I don't give a damn." But it's an undervalued quality for that exact reason: it's not hot. It's not desperate. It doesn't generate anxiety. It's a state of security and comfort and openness.
When Navé and I formulated our Imaginative Storm method, we realized that curiosity and criticism cannot coexist. So, we ask people to be curious about what their imaginations will produce when they write. Before long, the inner critic has been retrained. Now it's no longer criticizing your words as they hit the page. Instead, it's prodding you to be more curious. Less attached to what you already think or know. Ready and willing to surprise yourself.
This is where vivid, original writing comes from. From a relaxed mind, not a struggling mind.
When you're curious, you're immersed in the moment rather than invested in a particular result. If your mind is focused on "Will I get to the Olympics?", you may not notice the guy beside you stumbling and tripping you up (which happens a lot in steeplechase). If your mind is focused on "Will I get published?", you trip yourself up by trying to write like a published writer, and then you get frustrated because your writing is stiff and unoriginal and doesn't sound like you.
An Olympic trial final is a life-changing one-off event that demands everything you have in you. Sitting down to write is a repeatable event with an outcome that doesn't matter at all, because you can always throw away what you write if you don't like it and write something different tomorrow. But still, you feel the pressure: you want to write well, you try to write well, you beat yourself up if you don't write well, and—common scenario—you decide that the reason you’re not writing well is that you must not be a good writer.
If you decide that, you’re mistaken. You just haven’t learned how to be curious as you write.
Athletes work as hard on their mental and emotional muscles as on their physical muscles. They don't succeed if they beat themselves up and decide they're just not good runners, or swimmers, or whatever. They keep doing the work, curious about whether they can improve enough to realize their dream. The guy who came second and also made the US Olympic team never even made state in high school.
Isn't it amazing that this lukewarm quality of curiosity has such power? It's not a quality you're either born with or not born with. It's there in you, even if it’s a bit weak and dozy. You can build it up, like you’d build up a muscle. Then, the more curious you become, the more intriguing and full of interest life becomes. You notice more details and transitory delights. You're more open to possibility. You appreciate the beautiful ordinary.
Interested in becoming more curious as you write? Check out our book and self-paced online course Write What You Don’t Know. Join us for the Prompt of the Week any Saturday or Thursday (links in our Saturday and Thursday newsletters and in the footer at imaginativestorm.com).
Allegra, I love and appreciate your promptings always. Thank you.