I recently had a spate of medical tests that involved injected dyes and C.T. scans. There I was, laying on this human-sized platter waiting to get dragged through this donut-shaped machine with multiple monitors and IV tubes and straps etc. hanging from spider-like ceiling beams to snake into my arms. It was all a new experience for me and not one I particularly liked, but the newness shocked me into taking heed of all the sensations and what was going on. It reminded me of the importance of being in the moment for writers.

I’ve always been taught that being in the moment involves being ‘present’. That means that you are fully aware of what is happening to and around you, including all of your bodily sensations. It is not allowing all the thoughts about where you want to be and how to get there, or the thoughts of where you were and your various regrets, to get in the way of attending to where you are.

Sounds like a simple concept, but it’s harder than you know. Try going for a walk and just attending to the feelings in your body and your surroundings. Don’t be surprised when you come-to thinking about what to cook for dinner tonight, or your job, or the blog you need to write for next week. It’s a lot like suddenly becoming aware you’ve almost arrived at your destination and for the life of you, you can’t recall the driving. You’ve totally zoned out and as a result you’ve missed the scenery along the drive, or the birds in the trees, or the scent of an unusual flower. Or life, for that matter.

All of us do this. We’re so incredibly busy running from issue to issue and task to task in our lives that we feel we HAVE to double and triple multitask in order to get everything done. Heck, I do this knowingly every time I go for a walk and try to work through a plot problem.

As a writer we need to be aware of this tendency and to work on being in the moment. If we do so we can find the marvelous little details, or the glimpses of the human condition that can make our writing richer. From my time on the human platter I’m going to remember the burn of the dyes as it moved through my blood stream and the taste of hot copper taste on the back of my tongue. They’ll appear somewhere in my writing, because being in the moment, I noticed them.