Samuel Johnson reportedly said anyone who writes for any reason but money is a fool. Yet Johnson was a raconteur who enjoyed shooting the breeze with others, and surely therefore understood the impulse to share thoughts.

But more recently we have writing groups who gather just to write and read the writing to each other. I have been in one, and enjoyed it immensely. There is a strange camaraderie in writing (fiction, usually) based on the same prompt, to see where it goes and to reflect back on the results afterward. It isn't too difficult to find interesting things to appreciate and comment on, and so to avoid stepping on each other's tender egos.

And it turns out there is another reason to write. The process of sorting through thoughts to arrive at specific results apparently has benefits similar to meditation. Who would have thought? Calmness, reflection, integration, emotional release. I have a feeling when all these things are understood it will turn out that it is a right-brain exercise and so is meditation, both roaming over the mental landscape with a goal of not having a goal, of expressing what is deep inside without letting it overwhelm common sense and reason.

Having set aside my current writing project for two years, as part of re-entry to teaching, I have been pleased how much I enjoyed picking it up again. One comment, though. "Roaming over the mental landscape with a goal of not having a goal" doesn't really fit. That element has its place, when choosing among projects or just seeing where an idea goes in a writing group. But I think the info about writing being close kin to meditation was referring more to the day in and day out process of creating a story, with specific lives and with events that fit together in a way that is both natural and "managed". Like a garden, perhaps?

Yet I definitely feel the activity has an effect on me. It is not just time spent in "flow," although that has its own little oxytocin boost (I am speculating here, but Wikipedia tells me oxytocin is associated with giving birth, so that must be right ). It's the "coming alive" of characters, I think. "The Master and His Emissary" informs me that the right brain takes the lead on all things relational (as long as we relate to living things, not machines) including the theory of mind in which we imagine what other people are thinking or feeling. It is strongly akin to empathy (also a right-brain thing) and thinking in such a mode makes us much more receptive to helping out a fellow creature in trouble. So that's like meditation, right?

Harry Marks wrote:Having set aside my current writing project for two years, as part of re-entry to teaching, I have been pleased how much I enjoyed picking it up again. One comment, though. "Roaming over the mental landscape with a goal of not having a goal" doesn't really fit. That element has its place, when choosing among projects or just seeing where an idea goes in a writing group. But I think the info about writing being close kin to meditation was referring more to the day in and day out process of creating a story, with specific lives and with events that fit together in a way that is both natural and "managed". Like a garden, perhaps?

Yet I definitely feel the activity has an effect on me. It is not just time spent in "flow," although that has its own little oxytocin boost (I am speculating here, but Wikipedia tells me oxytocin is associated with giving birth, so that must be right ). It's the "coming alive" of characters, I think. "The Master and His Emissary" informs me that the right brain takes the lead on all things relational (as long as we relate to living things, not machines) including the theory of mind in which we imagine what other people are thinking or feeling. It is strongly akin to empathy (also a right-brain thing) and thinking in such a mode makes us much more receptive to helping out a fellow creature in trouble. So that's like meditation, right?

Hi Harry, this all reminds me of the Pomodoro Technique - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomodoro_Technique

Just finished David Brooks' "The Road to Character" which included a lengthy essay on Samuel Johnson's life and character. Apparently he not only regaled pub mates for free (and his Literary Club, surely one of the most illustrious group of friends ever to meet regularly, including over time Johnson, Adam Smith, Edward Gibbon of Rome's Decline and Fall, painter Joshua Reynolds, Edmund Burke, Oliver Goldsmith, Charles James Fox, the Shakespearean actor David Garrick and, of course, Boswell) but also wrote a considerable amount of prose for free (once his finances were established by, e.g. the dictionary).

I am tempted to steal a great quote from the Doctor, and re-arrange it to say that when one is tired of writing, one is tired of life.

I do think writers need to gather up at times to share their work. It's one thing to share links on social media and another to actually know the mind behind those links.

In regards to writing for free, I do this. On occasion I send work off to magazines, but most of the time I simply add my stories to the Internet Archive. What I enjoy most is not needing to market and still having readers.