I love your analogy of breaking into a bank to steal something from your sub-conscious mind. I’d liken meditation to shooting the guards with tranquilizer darts and free-writing to breaking the code to the vault, or at least to cracking open a few safety-deposit boxes.

In the book I’m now reading “Writing the Natural Way”, Gabriele Rico speaks of the Sign Mind (active) and the Design Mind (diffuse) and offers suggestions about how to write from the Design Mind. The first one involves making a mind map, although she calls it “clustering”. My active mind is so dominant, it’s as if my diffuse mind is cowering in the darkest part of the closet. I’m good at concentrating for long periods.

I’m NOT so good at taking breaks. Even when I’m not writing, I’m stuffing myself with information through reading videos and podcasts. I think I’m information-addicted, maybe an “input glutton”. Remember that movie Short Circuit where the robot kept saying: “Input Stephanie! INPUT!”

I feel like that robot sometimes, insatiable. This is followed by times of “information indigestion” when I feel mentally exhausted and want to do nothing more than sleep and read romance novels. What I really need is BALANCE and a much better practice around sleep.