Monkey Mind describes random thoughts that come to us unbidden, as if our brains have gone onto zap selection, throwing memories at us. These are rarely positive in nature and are more likely to be irrelevant, unhelpful or self-destructive.

I would suggest that you spank your monkey, should it misbehave, but this could be misconstrued! What I do, when the monkeys in my mind intrude, is to take them by the paws and sit them down at a keyboard, following the notion propounded in the Infinite Monkey Theorem.

This states that a monkey hitting keys at random on a typewriter keyboard for an infinite amount of time will almost surely type a given text, such as the complete works of William Shakespeare. Personally, I think they’re more likely to produce a novel comparable to the output of James Patterson, or, if the simians doing the typing were horny Bonobos, then maybe E. L. James at her best!

I used to get perplexed and annoyed at the daft thoughts that monkey mind gave me, but I’ve taken to giving my mischievous relatives the benefit of the doubt. Maybe they’re trying to help me, in some obscure way. After all, my brain keeps working on my WIP, even though I’m not consciously thinking about writing, offering me ideas out of the blue and also as I sleep. It could be that when monkey mind reminds me of the pain I experienced after breaking my wrist in 1982, that I could use some of that personal agony in an upcoming scene where my protagonist is assaulted.

Are you plagued with simians in your brain?

How do you deal with them?