Turning 360 Degrees inside A Painting

Saint Sebastian is one of the most mysterious subjects in painting. He is always depicted as a handsome young man, albeit with a deadpan expression his face, seemingly oblivious of the paint dealt by the arrows in his body and apparently distracted by something--what?--outside and beyonf the canvas he is painted on.

What is holding Saint Sebastian's attention?

Close your eyes, take deep breaths and slowly count to 20, and then step inside the painting. Then, using your imagination, turn 360 degrees inside the painting and observe everything around you,.

Are there other characters inside the painting? Who are they and what do they look like? What are they saying? Are they interactive images, i.e. do they see you and react to your presence as though they were ghosts? Or are they non-interative, like memorymemory traces in ether?

As for yourself, what are you feeling? What are you thinking?

Slowly count to twenty once again, take deepe breaths, and open your eyes. You may then take down notes as though emerging from a dream, if you like.

I used to conduct this exercise with my students employing the major and minor arcana of Tarot cards, but the images encountered within those tended to have an Alice-in-Wonderland, surreal, quality.

Two Apparently Conflicting Approaches

1) Train yourself to write under difficult, even adverse, conditions: while sitting as a passenger in a vehicle during heavy traffic, while seated on a park bench surrounded by young people having fun, while in the midst of partygoers, while music you don't like is blaring from a sound system, and so on. Gone should be the idyllic days of the writer needing to check into a hotel in order to finish writing his manuscript.

Write through hell, and back.

You will find that the tension creted by being in unpleasant, even harrowing, situations will function like fuel to a blazing fire.

2) Allow yourself to snack and drink while solving crossword puzzles, while composing a casual note, or while doodling, but deprive yourself of these when working on serious writing. 

You will find that ingesting food and drink functions as a sensory distraction that prevents ideas from flowing.