Rami Ungar The Writer

Yesterday I was working on two writing projects. One was my short story for my creative writing class, Animal Child (I’ve decided to stop calling it Doll’s Game, because that title’s no longer relevant), and the other is chapter forty-five of my serial killer thriller Snake (don’t marvel, thrillers are notorious for having many chapters buch each chapter is incredibly short). Both times, I plugged in my earbuds and started listening to lectures given by Deepak Chopra, a leading expert in alternative medicine and spirituality to improve your life. The lectures, available as hour-long videos on YouTube, each had different topics. The one I listened to while working on Animal Child was about how to improve your physical and mental well-being. The other, which I used to finish chapter forty-five and start chapter forty-six, was about how through certain forms of meditation, one can radically change their outlook on life.

I can honestly say I remember almost nothing from either one of these lectures, except the second one featured some stuff that reminded me of string theory’s ideas on vibrations shaping our world, and only because I finished chapter forty-five at a certain point in the lecture and bothered to watch and listen for a few minutes.

You see, those lectures hypnotized me, but not into meditating on the nature of life. Instead, the lecture became a background noise, while I focused on the world of the story that formed within my head and on putting that world down on paper (or to be more precise, bits of data that the monitor made to look like paper with words on it). It was interesting, because not only was I very relaxed while listening to this lecture, but I was writing much more easily than I had been recently. The story just seemed to flow onto the page, so that I was finishing much more quickly than I’d expected, and I don’t think I got distracted once!

I’ve written before on how listening to people talk on a show helps me to write, but this was different, where I only was listening to people speaking, and I wasn’t being distracted by visuals to go with the speaking. In fact, I dare to say this was an optimal state of mind to be writing in, where I’m hypnotized by the ongoing monologue of the speaker and focused on the work before me. I wonder if you did an EEG or an fMRI of my brain, what parts of my brain would light up, and what sort of brain waves would be most active. Of course, this sort of state has its drawbacks: a friend of mine saw me in the library while I was working on Animal Child and tapped me on the shoulder. I swear, I nearly umped out of my skin, I was so startled.

But even if I’m easily shocked while I’m in this hypnotic state by external distractions, it’s an interesting state to be in. I think the next time I try to write while listening to a lecture, I’ll do a TED talk, see if I can become immersed listening to different experts talk about their ideas or projects. I also wouldn’t mind listening to audiobooks of stuff like Paradise Lost or The Odyssey, which would definitely suck me into that state after a while. Anyone know any websites where you can listen to those sort of things for free? I’d be happy for recommendations.