April Dávila is essentially the “nerd translator” the writing world didn’t know it needed. With a background in biology and a deep-rooted Buddhist practice, she has managed to strip away the woo-woo from mindfulness and turn it into a high-powered engine for creative productivity. Whether she’s guiding writers through her Sit. Write. Here. program or winning awards for her debut novel, 142 Ostriches, April is proof that you don’t have to be a tortured artist to produce brilliant work—you just need to know how to sit still.
I sat down with April to talk about hacking the flow state, the science of discomfort, and why your brain is basically a master of gaslighting you during the revision process.
About April Dávila
April Dávila is an award-winning author, speaker, and writing coach. Publishers Weekly called her debut novel, 142 Ostriches, a “vivid, uplifting debut,” and the book went on to win the WILLA Award for Women Writing the West. Writer’s Digest listed her blog (at aprildavila.com) as one of the Best 101 Websites for Writers, and she is the creator of the Sit Write Here writing coaching program, helping writers quiet their inner critics, overcome writer’s block, and edit more effectively. To learn more, visit April’s website and follow her on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube.
Thanks for joining us, April. Let’s get started.
In Sit. Write. Here., you talk about how mindfulness helped you finally “find your footing” after six years of struggling with your first novel. If you could go back and give your 2013-self a 30-second elevator pitch for meditation, how would you convince her it’s not just sitting around doing nothing?
Dear 2013 me, when you finally get serious about carving out ten minutes a day to meditate, you get better at noticing your own thoughts, you learn to drop into a deep state of focus, and you roll more easily with all the ups and downs of being a writer. There is no greater gift you can give yourself. So just sit down, close your eyes, and take a few deep breaths. You can thank me later.
You’ve got a biology degree, which gives you a very no-nonsense approach to mindfulness. What is the most fascinating thing you discovered about the neuroscience of the “creative flow state” while researching the book?
In researching the work of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (who literally wrote the book on flow), I learned how, in his research, he found that the human brain only processes about 120 bits of information a second. That’s so little information! Truly, I was shocked, but here’s the good news for writers: when we dedicate that processing power exclusively to our writing, the brain literally doesn’t have enough bandwidth to keep up a running critique of our work or to keep track of silly things like time. The result is a state of creative flow, and it’s something we can train ourselves to tap into, just by getting super focused. Mindfulness meditation practice helps us to do that.
One of your core practices is “Embrace Discomfort,” in which you use stillness to build a tolerance for physical discomfort. How does learning not to scratch an itch on your nose actually help a writer stay in the room when they’re drafting a soul-crushing scene about heartbreak or grief?
This is another fascinating fact about our brains: the neuro pathways for physical discomfort are really closely wired to the pathways for emotional discomfort, so when we train ourselves to be with minor physical discomforts (by not scratching an itchy nose during your meditation, for instance) we’re actually, at the same time, building our tolerance for emotional discomfort that arises when we have to write things like fear, or heartbreak, or the myriad other unpleasant emotions that make a story compelling. All you have to do is sit really still for a few minutes a day, and you’ll find that you have much more endurance when it comes to writing the hard parts.
You’ve mentioned that writers are often “tortured” by the gap between the book in their head and the draft on their screen. How does mindfulness help us stop the “inner critic” from becoming a “total bully” during that first-draft phase?
The inner critic has almost nothing useful to contribute while you’re writing your first draft. The best thing you can do when you’re still getting those first pages written is to recognize when that critical voice pipes up and then tell it to go sit down, be quiet, and wait its turn. For one full draft, just write. Be messy with it, see where it takes you, let it surprise you. This is one of the most fun, creative parts of writing anything. Then, and only then, once the first draft is done, go ahead and invite the inner critic back to the party. It’s in revisions that the inner critic really gets to shine by picking apart everything that isn’t working so that you can make it better. But if you let it chime in too soon, it’ll shut you down hard and fast.
Sit. Write. Here. isn’t just a book; it’s a full-blown writing program. What’s the most common “aha moment” you see in your morning Zoom sessions when writers realize they’ve been approaching discipline all wrong?
I absolutely love when a new writer comes and joins our community to try meditating before writing for the first time. When the writing time is over, they lift their heads up, usually with a smile, and say something like “I can’t believe how much I got done in one hour.” This is the power of meditating for a few minutes before you write. It allows you to slip into that state of flow: time stretches, ideas float up out of nowhere, and it just feels great. The best part is when I tell them that they can have this experience every time they sit down to write. It’s such a game-changer, and it’s not about discipline at all. It’s just about becoming more aware of your thoughts.
Your debut novel, 142 Ostriches, is set in the high-desert world of an ostrich ranch. Did the technical, methodical side of your science background help you manage the research for such a unique setting, or did you have to consciously “turn off” the biologist to let the novelist lead?
Great question! I learned so many things about ostriches while researching that book, and most of them never made it into the book (did you know ostriches have three eyelids?). Ultimately, my writer-brain wins out, because not every detail belongs in the story, but I do love doing research. It’s one of the best things about being a writer – you can literally call anything research. The downside is the ever-present buzz of anxiety that someone might someday subpoena my browser history.
You talk about the “negativity bias” and how we take rejections personally. Since 90% of rejections come without an explanation, what is the “mindful script” you suggest writers run in their heads when that “Standard Rejection” email hits their inbox?
The first thing to keep in mind is that you were not rejected; the writing was. And writing gets rejected for all kinds of reasons: too short, too long, too much like something else they’re already publishing, etc. The reason it hurts is that it pokes at the fear that your writing could be better. The good news? That’s the one thing you actually have some control over. If you’re worried that your writing isn’t good enough, take a class, attend a workshop, read a book on craft, or browse YouTube for advice. Always be learning and looking to improve as an artist.
You’re a “basil enthusiast,” a runner, and a writer. When you’re totally stuck on a plot point in your current fiction project, which of those outlets—the garden or the pavement—usually delivers the breakthrough?
Pavement. Hands down. Sometimes you need to get out of your head, and doing something physical, especially if it’s hard enough to distract you from other thoughts, is just the thing. I spend time in the garden when I want to think about a story, when I’m considering options, or thinking about character backstory. When I’m stuck and need to not think about the story for a bit, that’s when I take myself for a good, hard run. When I come back to the work afterward, I usually find the answer that was evading me before.
If you were forced to host a dinner party for three characters from 142 Ostriches and you had to use your mindfulness skills to keep the peace, who are you inviting, and what’s the “emergency” meditation prompt you’d give them if things got heated?
I would host a dinner party for my main character, Tallulah, her mother, Laura, and Laura’s sister (Tallulah’s aunt), Christine. Laura would show up half-drunk. Christine would quietly fume. Tallulah would lob questions intended to start a fight. Frankly, I’d love to see that argument, but when the time came to keep the peace, I’d insist that everyone close their eyes and take three long, deep breaths, exhales longer than the inhales. I wouldn’t call it meditation, though. In my experience, there’s nothing quite so annoying as someone who jumps into a high-stress situation and proposes that everyone just take a minute to meditate.
Thank you, April, for an enlightening and fun interview! If you haven’t picked up Sit. Write. Here. yet, be sure to stop in at your favorite local indie bookshop or use any of the links above!
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