My top practice for creating from the imaginal realm

This week, I’m (finally) sharing the creative practice I’ve been promising for the past few weeks.

I do a version of this practice every single day, and it’s usually the first practice I share with the writers I coach. It could not possibly be more simple. I’ve broken it down into steps below, but the quick version is: take yourself for a walk, drop into the world around you so that you’re really paying attention, and speak your ideas into a recorder as you walk.

It’s simple, but the way you approach it matters. This exercise is about receiving ideas from beyond yourself and speaking them from your body, so it’s going to work best if you’re relaxed and enjoying being in your body. In the interests of helping you get there, I’ve shared a little video pep talk above which draws on the deep history of creativity in the human species, to show you that you were born to create, and an exercise like this is just play, for that primeval part of you.

If you’re currently in a tailspin around self-worth and trying to prove yourself through your writing—i.e., if writing or creativity are currently the opposite of relaxing for you—you might want to first visit last week’s post about getting out of a self-worth spiral, then try this exercise when you’re feeling centred.

If you do try this exercise, please let me know how it goes! Hearing how people are connecting to imagination is one of the greatest joys of my life.

Catching ideas and speaking them from the body

You will need a phone or other voice-recording device.

1. Find the part of the day when you feel most creative and least anxious or preoccupied. For many people, it’s around dawn or dusk. If you’re not sure, try both of these and choose whichever works best for you.

2. Take yourself on a walking date at this creative golden hour, bringing a recording device with you. I take my phone but a dictaphone would work great too. I have no idea why you’d have a dictaphone and not a phone, but maybe you’re a newspaper reporter in the 1940s.

3. Try to walk somewhere near home (you want it to be easy to reach, especially because this works best when you do it regularly) but as quiet and relaxing and green as possible. Parks and open, green spaces work well, but the sun rises everywhere, so there’s always something natural to connect to. (If you live in a city, this is when going out very early in the morning can come in handy, as you’re more likely to have the streets to yourself. I’ve done this while living in central London, walking round and round a small city square in the dark hours before dawn.)

4. Walk slowly. Slowly enough to drop out of any whirring energy or thought patterns. Slowly enough to really notice what’s going on around you—to hear the birdsong and taste the clouds. Open all of your senses as you walk.

5. When you’ve fully arrived in your surroundings, start speaking into your recorder while walking. If you’re already working on a story or other creative idea, simply speak it. Tell the story or the idea to the trees, the sky, the birds. Speak it as if you’re telling it to a live audience, because you are.
   
   If you’re in a generative phase, seeking ideas, introduce yourself to the birds, the trees, the sky, the wind, the rain, whatever else you find out there. Tell them you’re there seeking stories, and ask if there’s anything they’d like to tell you. Now listen. Not just with your ears but with your whole body. Listen and feel for any glimmers of images or ideas or feelings that bubble up, anywhere in your body, and speak them aloud. Speak them and unfold them: describe them to your living audience. Make connections. Follow wherever they take you in memory or feeling.
   
   You might instinctively want to bat these things away as daydreams. Don’t. That’s not a daydream; it’s your imagination.

6. You will probably feel a bit mad as you do this. That’s ok. All the best people are a bit mad.

7. This is important—maybe the most important part of all. Pay attention to where your speech is coming from in your body. If it feels like the ideas or your voice are coming from your head, stop. Settle into the rhythm of your walking. Welcome the whole world in through your senses—your full bodily senses—and speak back to it from your heart or your gut or anyplace else below your neck that feels alive.

8. When you get home, type up what you’ve recorded. Leave it at least a day before coming back to read it. Which parts spark something in you as you read? Keep working with them, and letting them unfold: they’re the world speaking through you, choosing you as a channel.