If I were to tell you that you should write with both sides of your brain, you’d get offended, right? Of course, we all use our brain, both sides of the brain, all the time, whether we’re driving or cooking or writing. Still, most people will have a tendency to favour one hemisphere over the other.

The left hemisphere is responsible for analytical thinking and word manipulation. People with a left-hemisphere dominance tend to be logical, structured, sequential, analytic and organised. Their writing corner will most likely be quiet, brightly lit, neat and organised. Such writers love deadlines and paperclips. They thrive on deadlines and prefer to handle one writing project at a time.

The right hemisphere governs holistic and lateral thinking, so essential in creative writing. Those with a right-hemisphere dominance tend to be holistic, intuitive and simultaneous thinkers. Their desk (if indeed they use a desk and not the floor) looks messy to everybody except themselves, with bits of paper, yesterday’s coffee mugs and last week’s newspapers. They prefer semi-darkness (bright light tends to agitate them) and the freedom to work on many ideas at once. Deadlines stress them out to the extent that they experience writer’s block whenever they think of the time limit.

Now imagine that you take a writer whose natural style is holistic (right hemisphere) and tell him that he should organise his bits of paper into neat folders. You stuff the folders into a filing cabinet and tell the poor guy to sit at an empty desk with a sharpened pencil and a new note pad… chances are, he’ll be getting a writer’s block faster than it takes to fling the pencil across the room.

This is why it’s so important not to be influenced by the advice you find in magazines, books and conferences. Listen to it, by all means, but only obey what feels right to you. Just because Terry Pratchett writes for eight hours every day doesn’t mean his particular writing style is suitable for you. Some people write well by getting up an hour early every day, or by chain-smoking, or by playing loud music. Good for them.

So, let’s start again. You have an idea. You want to write it down. You have to write it down. So, what do you do?

If you abandon your cup of tea mid-sip, switch off the music and sit down at your desk to do the writing, ask yourself why. Why the desk and not the bed? Why switch off the music? Why not take the cup of tea with you to sip as you ponder?

You might discover that those did not make those choices consciously: you just followed a pattern of learnt behaviour. At school, they told us that to study we needed a quiet area away from all distractions, a neat desk, a firm chair and plenty of light. And yet, the latest research tells us that sitting at a desk can place too much strain on the coccyx, and that bright light can lead to burnout.

Don’t get me wrong: some people really do like desks and bright bulbs, even when given other options. But that’s what working with both the brain hemispheres is all about: use your right brain hemisphere to come up with all the creative possibilities, then analyse them with the left hemisphere.

Ask yourself how you really want to write.

• Do you really like writing in the morning, or do you only do it because that’s what Mary Higgins Clark did?
• Do you like sitting upright when writing?
• Would listening to some music help? (Mozart is usually a good choice, though I usually make it through the low times with “Losing my religion” by REM.)
• Would you like to chew gum when thinking up a new plot? Then go ahead, nobody will think the worse of you (and you can always lie about in the interviews when you’re famous).
• Do you like your desk neatly organised or would you prefer to work in creative chaos? Many textbooks will advise you to clean up your working area at the end of your writing day so that you can start afresh next time, but do you know what? It’s your desk. Don’t keep it tidy just to fulfil somebody else’s expectations.
• Do you like your room cosily warm or refreshingly cool? Think about it: what makes you think better, concentrate harder, stay awake longer?
• Writing is a lonely occupation. Do you like that, or would you prefer working with a friend, in a group, with a coach?
• Do you like sitting still, or would it help the story line if you got up and paced around the room while organising your ideas?
• Would it aid you creative process to fidget with a pen, a ball of modelling clay, a squishy toy? It’s been scientifically proved that if you’re a tactile person, your concentration levels will benefit from such activities.
• How do you motivate yourself? Is “having written” enough of an incentive, or would it help to have an external reward system such as a friend reading your work, or eating a box of chocolates once the chapter is finished?
• Do you like routine? A lot of advice for budding writers centres around the premise that you should find a regular time slot in your schedule and declare it your writing time. But if you’re someone who needs variety, you will soon be bored by the sameness of your days and you might even start feeling resentful towards your writing for no reason other than the fact that it’s 8pm and you are now obliged to start working on your book.

Ask yourself how you really want to write. Then do it.

And then… turn it all upside down.

Yes, you heard me. Determine your ideal writing conditions, then reverse them. If reversing them all at once sends you into panic mode, then select just one or two to try out at a time.

The reason for that is to exercise both sides of your brain. As I mentioned before, the left hemisphere is good at words, while the right hemisphere is the creative one. As a writer, you need both those skills developed and well exercised.

Working outside of your comfort zone from time to time should do the trick.

Side Panel: Right side, left side, which side are you?

You may be governed by the left hemisphere if you:

• love to keep to-do lists, shopping lists, character sheets,
• follow the recipe to the letter every time you make cheesecake,
• know the price of bread in three of your local stores,
• hang up the toilet paper so that the straight part touches the wall,
• always roll up the toothpaste tube.

You may be governed by the right hemisphere if you:

• enjoy multitasking,
• need to know the overall picture and the reasons behind every project you tackle,
• tend to use your intuition and feelings rather than rationalise about a problem,
• are happy to substitute Milo for cocoa powder when baking chocolate cake,
• never replace the cap on your tube of toothpaste.

(source: “The Power of Diversity”, Barbara Prashnig)