Every Sunday, The New York Times arrives in our front yard in Sebastopol. We read it all week long. Five-year-olds do not allow for leisurely Sunday mornings, but the pleasure spreads out well over the course of seven days. Little snatches of Sunday morning.

So it is that I just read an article in The New York Times Magazine of Feb. 10. called “Why Worry?” It’s by the infamous Po Bronson (the guy who wrote the article about not praising your children) and his co-author Ashley Merryman, and is from their forthcoming book, Top Dog: The Science of Winging and Losing. And I thought the exciting conclusions applied brilliantly to writers.

It’s a bit complicated for me to lay out all their points, but they looked at the impact of stress on folks with different genetic propensities. And it turns out that short-term stress can be beneficial. “The performance is highly motivating,” says a researcher sited in the study, discussing academic competitions such as spelling bees, science fairs and chess teams. “Even if a child knows her science project won’t win the science fair, she still gets that moment to perform. That moment can be stressful and invigorating and scary, but if the child handles it well, it feels like victory.”

I know from working intimately with so many writers that for many of us, a voice pops up in our heads as soon as we face (or face off with?) the blank page. Some call it the critic, some the monster. It’s vicious, full of doubt and sharp perfectionism, and it can be fatal to the kind of loose, flawed creative flow that is necessary for beginning . . . or continuing . . . to write.

I think this article really points to the solution for those of us dogged by this voice or variants of it. For example:

‘Studies that compares professionals with amateur competitors . . . show that professionals feel just as much anxiety as amateurs. The difference is in how they interpret their anxiety.”

What happens for you when you think about writing and don’t want to do it, or never seem to find the time? What do you do when the critic comes along, harping about your failures? How do you view the stress of writing, of creating?

“The amateurs view it as detrimental, while the professionals tend to view stress as energizing. It gets them to focus.”

Changing your view of stress can actually impact your performance–and it surely will encourage you to do more of what formerly you might have shied away from out of fear of the feelings raised by doing it, like writing. The article is amazing because it lists real differences in a group “told to feel positive about being anxious,” including [significantly] increased blood flow, “with more oxygen and energy coursing through the body and brain.”

So how about it, writers? Let’s take this show professional and embrace the stress of writing. You come to the page, breaking out of the safe routines of your life. Here you are, on the edge of the unknown. Who can say what might happen, what you might discover, what you might create? You fire up your screen or fold open your notebook and uncap your pen. The world is vast and terrifying and full of chance. You put down a word and then another. You are scared; if you really put it on the line, you are petrified. Good! You are alive, in this moment, with these words that no one has ever combined in quite this way before. You are hurtling along and everything might explode. It all might be as terrible as that voice proclaims. It might make no sense. You might do badly, and it matters, it matters a great deal, but you keep going, in fear and triumph. Bravo! Bravo! You are writing.

Five Ways to Challenge Your Writer

“Probably nothing induces a threat state more than feeling you can’t make any mistakes. Threat physiology can be activated with the sense of being judged, or anything that triggers the fear of disappointing others.” Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman, in  their forthcoming book, Top Dog: The Science of Winging and Losing.

Writing activates a threat state. Judged? Disappointing others? It’s all right there, every time we sit down.

So how do we embrace stress, the playful competition of this “threat state”? This is one of the great successes of my Craft Course. Everyone writes and reads aloud, more than once, every single class meeting. There’s a bit of racing the clock, a bit of the performance before talented peers. And it all builds into a gorgeous, energized mixture of language and story and character and the intake of breath when a brilliant sentence emerges.

Here are five ways to use stress to  challenge your writing self:

1) Write an entire story in four hours. Set a timer. Give yourself certain items or elements you must include–props, if you will, or the tennis net (form). Sit down and do it, completely.

2) Find a writing partner, group or class where you read your work aloud right after you write it. This doesn’t work for everyone right away, but actually, over time, everyone I’ve worked with improves enormously, both in the craft level of their writing and in their ability to churn out strong scenes off the top of their heads.

3) Start a blog. Go public in that way. “Public not perfect,” as my partner Angie says. Begin your dialog with the world in that way.

4) Commit to going to a public reading--an open mike is great, or have a party to invite your friends to hear you read for fifteen minutes and then celebrate. Hold a salon where everyone shares. Find a way to read your work aloud and take it public now. Don’t wait.

5) Make a public commitment to write a certain amount every day and then find a real way to hold yourself to it–post it daily on Facebook or use one of those sites that take your money and give it to some evil cause if you don’t meet your goal. Make your goal inviolable, and then press on to meet it.

Remember, stress can be beneficial and energizing. Go, go, go!