Unleashing the Subconscious

Photo by Robina Weermeijer on Unsplash

A friend recently asked me this: "I have a really hard time putting my subconscious in the front seat when I write a first draft. I self edit constantly. Do you have any techniques that help you 'get there'? A way to frame your thinking? Have you had this issue or guided someone else through it?”

One of the points I make when I discuss the writing process is that different stages of writing involve different ways of mental functioning. For outlining and editing, it’s primarily your conscious mind in the driver seat. When drafting, however, it’s your subconscious that rules. 

But how do you unleash your subconscious? For some people, it comes naturally. For others, like my friend, the judgmental voice of the conscious mind keeps intruding.

I’m naturally good at working from my subconscious. But there are cases when I find it hard to unleash my subconscious. Specifically, if I’m trying to write from a really precise, detailed outline. Whenever I leave too little space for my subconscious to feed me material, it feeds me nothing. 

(My solution: set aside the detailed outline, create a new writing outline that consists of a few high level questions or prompts, and use that to draft. The initial, precise outline in effect is treated as a thinking tool and—later—editing tool, rather than a drafting tool.)

Here are three ideas that can help you overcome the challenge of putting your subconscious in the driver seat. 

Trust your process. One of the major reasons we won’t give our subconscious the freedom to draft without self-editing is because we don’t trust our ability to edit. 

But if you have total confidence that you can take a draft and, in Pixar’s memorable formulation, take it from suck to non-suck, then you won’t feel the need to get something good down on paper the first time. 

Remember: the biggest barrier to editing is not a bad draft but a non-draft. Your primary goal has to be to get something on paper that you can improve—not to get something good on paper. 

The need for speed. If you’re really comfortable writing from your subconscious, it can be valuable to slow down a bit, to grope for a better way of putting things, for a new analogy or example, for a better word choice or a striking turn of phrase. 

But if this is an area where you struggle, what I recommend is: try to outrun your conscious mind. Get down words as fast as you can, so that by the time your conscious mind says, “Hey, that’s garbage,” it’s too late because you’re on to the next sentence. 

Play with process. I used to teach that there was a necessary order to a writing process—what I called the TODE method: thinking, outlining, drafting, editing. I still think that’s a good starting point for most people. But now I encourage people to adapt the process to their own needs and preferences. 

If you struggle unleashing your subconscious, try this: write a draft purely from your subconscious, without an outline. Focus on explaining the issue to an individual in your target audience, the way you would in conversation. Don’t worry about length or organization or repetition—just talk to them on paper. 

THEN once you’re finished, set the draft aside and write an outline. Now try writing to that outline. You’ve primed your subconscious in a way that should make drafting easier. Or, if you’re still finding drafting difficult, try to edit your initial draft based on the outline. 

There’s a lot more to say on this topic. For example, when I work with clients, one of the things we’ll do is dive really deep into how their mind is functioning when they try to draft. We’ll explore times when writing has come easy. We’ll develop exercises designed to make drafting from the subconscious feel natural. 

But the bottom line is: don’t try to FIGHT your subconscious. Don’t try to brute force your way to a draft. Rather, what you’re looking for is a way to work with your natural way of functioning—to take advantage of your strengths and turn your weaknesses into strengths—not to coerce yourself into conforming to some Platonic ideal of the writing process. 

If you try out some of these ideas, let me know how it goes. If you have your own strategies for drafting, I’d love to hear about those too.