Creating From Discovery, Not Control

What if your best creative ideas show up when you let go and disappear into your work?

I’ve been testing a new approach to writing, thanks to my work with the amazing writing coach and friend Azul Torronez.

It feels entirely different. I let the writing come through me rather than forcing myself to come up with ideas. I sit down to write with no preconceived plan, and as I write I explore what’s on my mind. When I do it this way, without a specific agenda, but rather for me to discover what it is that I have to say, I’m able to feel what I write more than think it. The key way that I know that I’m writing well is when I feel it.

Strangely, when you write in this way, you read through what you wrote and think to yourself, “huh, I had no idea I wrote that?”

This type of writing feels complete in a whole different manner. The piece itself is complete, even if it needs editing. I know it’s complete because I can’t feel anything else to say.

And what I end up writing comes as a surprise, even to me!

In writing, and possibly in many other domains, my best work is when I don’t try so hard. 

When I surrender, It feels like I’m disappearing into the process and allowing it to happen rather than trying to make it happen.

This is very difficult for those who believe that they should have a plan or every outcome.

Creation as Discovery & Vulnerability

What Azul taught me is that everyone gets the craft of writing backwards. Many people have an idea for a book or a topic, and then they outline it, and then they try and write their point. At least for me, what I’ve discovered is that I can do the opposite. I get curious about something and then explore it through writing. 

The point of what I write arrives at the end, as does the title and as does me understanding what I have to say. I feel into different ways of communicating as I’m sunk into the writing process without being so directed. I can write something that I *know* I should write without me knowing that I should have written it moments before. It’s like pulling a thread and seeing where it leads and then getting clear signals about what you must say or share. 

In this way, I’m writing as a discovery process – the ideas are ahead of me, not behind me. My best writing exists in what I discover, not in what I know.

The more vulnerable I am to go places in my writing, the more I feel connected to the thread I’m following, and the better the writing feels for me. There’s a time and place for editing and categorization, and that comes after you’ve gotten out what you want to say. 

Going Beyond Your “Self” in Your Work

Where do I pull my ideas from if not myself? How do I write things that I don’t already know that I have to say? I believe that this is where artists get it right, that there is some other aspect of consciousness, our own or others, that we can tap into that is more spontaneous. 

When you write from a source beyond yourself, you are able to pull ideas out from beyond your own mind’s limitations.

Because I’m pulling from a source that is expanded beyond myself, my ideas themselves are more expansive and whole in their form. 

If I was writing only what I already knew, I would only be writing over well-worn territory. How did Einstein come up with novel ideas in physics? He used his imagination to go beyond his own limitations, he connected to something beyond thinking. He dismissed logic and praised imagination. 

The mind knows the past, and where you’ve been. As you go beyond your own thinking, your creative future is in an intuitive synthesis, connecting to a consciousness beyond yourself. When you go beyond your individual self, you connect more with the