The Ultimate Guide To “Stream Of Consciousness Writing”

2. In this blog then, I’d like to walk through my insights and guidance on how to effectively employ this style of writing or stream of consciousness writing to become a writing powerhouse…which I’m hoping one day to be considered by others (the true sign of volume based writing accomplishments haha). I, myself, as with anyone committed to a path of some discipline don’t really think about that. It’s more the case the finally, over the last trying two years – I’ve found a way to wrap that which I love (the creative process) within my world of work (my agency life). Or at the very least, I’m financially stable enough to pursue such an endeavour (which we’ll come to in a later blog about building your freelancing career as a writer).

3. MY WRITING ROUTINE So, we’ll dig into some of the practical aspects of my writing routine which I’ll walk you through now. First of all – you can, of course, see what the time is above. That’s something I do for myself mainly just because I like to see the time at which I start, and the time at which I finish (sometimes I paste that in but not always).

4. It serves as a KIND OF historical record to correlate the day and time upon which I wrote something. Although in some respects I should perhaps also consider the year as well. You’ll also note from the time – that I like to get my writing done at the start of my day. I also write based on impulse and strategy. What I mean by this – is that I wake up every morning having no clue what I intend to write about that morning. Simply – what I’ll do is wake up – and try and figure out what my ‘impulses’ are telling me. Today, my impulse leads me to beginning this blog post. On other days I’ll wish to write about a few things and then quickly do some initial planning around it.

5. PLANNING MY STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS WRITING This might seem like a juxtaposition because by very nature – I guess one would contend that ‘there can be no planning with writing stream of consciousness’. I think that planning can be thematic. For example – in the instance of this blog I wished (as I said) to discuss my style of writing – And to ‘back it up’ if you will – I wondered – ‘does it have a name?’ – ‘it MUST have a name’. But then I went one step further – I also wanted to see if it’s something that people search for and are interested in as a concept in general – turns out that globally (as according to Ahrefs – the keyword research tool that I use) – That 3,500 people search for ‘stream of consciousness’ writing per month:

6. What that means is that I’m not alone in being interested in this subject – and therefore interesting in writing about this subject. It’s a little ‘meta’ of course but my ‘stream of consciousness’ had led me to write about ‘streams of consciousness’ as a writing style. You’ll also notice on the image above that there’s a ‘keyword difficulty’ barometer of 12. So if it’s got a keyword difficulty of 12 – that means that ranking on page 1 is not crazily difficult.

7. DECIDING WHAT EXACTLY I’LL WRITE ABOUT Much of it depends upon what I have to say/what I know about the subject. Well typically – my impulses are led by subjects I know a decent amount about experientially – and not theoretically. If it’s just theoretical alone – well that doesn’t sound much like me. I.e I talk of my own personal experiences and wrap them into a narrative.

8. What was fascinating for me to learn from Stephen’s King’s memoir called ‘On Writing’ – which serves as a kind of guide on how to write effective prose – is that for him (and I assume most/many writers) – this process isn’t so so different. That is – the most effective prose is drawn from personal experiences that the writer has had that are then transformed into something new. But anyway, interestingly enough – I guess THIS, i.e this part of what I’m writing is what I am adding that is new to the subject. That’s why you need to be very careful with any level of topic research (it’s different when you know nothing about a space experientially – than all you have to rely upon is research). But anyway – we plough forward to see what some of the ‘others’ have said – that I find to add value to this post: So apparently it’s a style of writing where the reader can track the ‘fluid mental state’ of the writer. Good news is then – that THIS post definitely qualifies as that.

10. WHICH IS THE BEST EXAMPLE OF THE STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS WRITING TECHNIQUE? Of the ‘little’ reading I’ve done in this space (when compared to the vast nature of authors who excelled in this space) – as mentioned above – my favourite and one I’d recommend as a really powerful example are looking at Stephen King’s book ‘On Writing’. I think it makes the most sense for a reader of this blog because I’m very confident you’re reading this as a fan of the genre and as a writer to some degree yourself. Take a look at this book or Audible and listen to Stephen King talk through his own streams of consciousness and how it feeds into much of his fictional works.

11. THE BENEFITS OF STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS WRITING In case you’re in any doubt as to the benefits of this style – let me run through how I find that it helps me:

12. It unlocks my creative mind It facilitates the planning of my day It’s very meditative It’s healing Accelerated my content production 10x Quality of content is consistently high It combines journaling with the actual delivery of value ● ● ● ● ● ● ● The habits I’m combining here are: Journaling Blogging Keyword Research Led for both ● ● ● This is a very effective way (for me at least) to get things done.

13. FINAL THOUGHTS More an encouragement of you my dear reader – to get on this journey. What I find deeply moving about producing this style of writing is that ultimately – if less than 10 people ended up ‘finding’ this blog – it won’t matter to me. Please try this style of writing. I totally appreciate it’s too early for me to definitively say anything (as it’s only been 40 days). But what I can say – is that very infrequently (i.e less than 10 times) in my 34 years – have I done something so consistently as I’m doing now.