Truly creative writing, attribution and mindfulness

There are many books for writers that are designed to inspire you to write and to write well. 

For me, the best books are the ones that you have to put down because you feel: "I have to write now; it can't wait"

Writers often offer insights into their inspirations at literary festivals but the best advice I ever received was from Julia Green , children's writer and tutor at Bath Spa University. 

It has stayed with me and I often return to those five words:

"Get close to your character"

Whenever my writing diverts off into my own thoughts and favourite places or when I feel it's not resonating it's because I've lost that inkling of my character's feelings and thoughts. 

This is particularly likely to happen when I write in the third person. "She" feels a long way away and I need to remind myself that a novel perpetuates an untruth that we all act for a reason.

In real life I believe our actions and mediated by all kinds of random events to do with brain and body chemistry, day of the week and unplanned accidents.  Perhaps that's what a post-modern novel is designed to convey but it makes for heavy reading.

We live at the the Age of the 'Crisis of Attribution'; for most of us, natural disasters are not 'Acts of God' as they were in medieval times but random events which challenge a belief in a plan or an organising consciousness. 
In my best moments I believe in a spiritual realm but mostly I bumble along like everyone else, beset by regrets and ruminations.
In novels, A follows B which causes C in a believable and inevitable consequence of a character's actions. 
The challenge for the writer is to simulate free choice; to persuade readers that decisions and actions have consequences. It is conventional for puzzles to be solved, for evil doers to suffer consequences except in the case of lovable rogues and antiheroes. 
There's a great hunger for uplifting stories to be true and it's so strong that Governments employ storytellers to explain away setbacks and ugly inconveniences.
So my conclusion is to 'be in the zone' I need to become mindful and to imagine each of my characters is meeting the consequences of his or her actions.