From SWFA:
Writing classes and books are filled with tips on creating characters and developing plot, but very few ever offer the golden jewel that oversees all the other components meshing together to arrive at a story or novel: coherence. In fact, when an author discovers coherence for the first time, they will experience a place where words melt away, and the only thing that remains is a deep knowing and trust in how the story will take shape.
When the outside world interrupts our writing practice, we can find it hard to let it go enough to get back to work. Depending on the circumstances—job, social events, health issues, chores or family responsibilities, and certainly global changes—we might feel more like a chess pawn being moved around, than a disciplined writer turning out pages each day. If this resonates with you, then you understand incoherence, the state of mind we writers are most often trying to negotiate.
Incoherence tricks us into thinking ‘Time’ is our master and that there will always be a short supply of it. And if not lacking time, then some good old fashion quiet, a writer’s best friend—and by quiet, I don’t mean sheltering in the high mountains without Wi-Fi, but the mental silence that comes from coherence, which allows us to turn the tables on outer distractions, in order to regain our throne of peace, enough to create.
Every writer knows this secret place. How many times have you said, ‘The book just wrote itself,’ or ‘the words just spilled out like someone else wrote it?’ That’s the outer rim of what coherence has to offer. Coherence will help you regain control over your environment which is distracting or stealing your attention to write; or your body that will swing from being tired to super energetic impacting your productivity; or time, mentioned above, which appears to control your every attempt to write and complete things.
Coherence isn’t a mythological place like Narnia or Shangri-La that writer-heroes go in search of. No, it’s a state of mind that can actually be accessed and then utilized in your writing practice. In reality, if we stay writing long enough, we’ll reach this space of mental clarity—it can take hours or days or a long retreat. But what if you could access a deeper coherence quicker, or even better, never leave it?
That’s the golden jewel. It’s a writer’s superpower.
Link to the rest at SWFA