Lately, I’ve been short on energy, even when I had enough time to write. Like most “modern” writers, I take short (unproductive, but frequent) breaks to check email or social media posts. In a word, I multitask. Multitasking: the Energy Drain Yes, I’d heard that multitasking was bad, but I figured I must be the […]
focus
Getting Unstuck after 2020
After losing two family members in the pandemic, I had a month-long severe reaction this spring to my second Covid shot. When I resurfaced, feeling practically comatose, I was behind on one Christmas mystery book deadline and a novel (set in 1850s England.) None of my decades-old “get started” techniques worked, which induced a near […]
Find Your Focus: Stick to the ONE Thing
“Be like a postage stamp. Stick to one thing until you get there.” ~Josh Billings This quote comes from a book I love called The ONE Thing: the Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results by Gary Keller. As I mentioned last week, after a number of back-to-back setbacks, I needed to relaunch my writing habits. […]
Compartmentalize to End Procrastination . . . But How?
When re-reading Getting It Done by Andrew J. DuBrin, PH.D., I came to a section on dealing with procrastination. One piece of advice is something I’d like your feedback on. I have struggled to compartmentalize as he suggested. Except for occasional months here or there, I haven’t acquired that skill. The author said you can […]
Uncluttered Office Equals Focused Mind
Are you ever overwhelmed by clutter (even good clutter)? This will be primarily a photo sharing blog post—and you can skip to the last half of the post if you want to—but I want to share what prompted my office decluttering project. I have a small 10-foot X 10-foot office which holds a treadmill/desk, a […]
Inner Critics: Valuable Editor or Time Waster?
Writers are opinionated people. Our brains never seem to stop. We criticize because we “know” how things and people should be. This “critical editor component” of our personality is absolutely invaluable to the editing and revision process. If you can’t spot what’s wrong with a manuscript, you can’t fix it. However, this same critical ability can […]
Writing Under the Influence and Its Effect on Creativity
Back in high school, I watched people transform from shy wallflowers to social butterflies by drinking. They grew talkative and tried things they would never have done sober. Being under the influence didn’t truly help them, although they swore it did. Being under the influence doesn’t help a writer’s creativity either. [And that includes many other things […]
A Parent’s (or Grandparent’s) Writing Schedule
With summer vacation upon us, it seemed like a good time to revisit the subject of writing when you are involved with children or grandchildren. When my children were small–and even as they grew older–I struggled to find a writing schedule that worked most days of the week. After much trial and error, I would […]
Beware the Fuzzies–and Focus!
“How’s your focus?” It’s a question I’ve been wrestling with lately. Last year my calendar was so full of very good things, but I was frequently exhausted and vaguely dissatisfied. (Well, not vaguely actually. It was a very pointed dissatisfaction with the amount of writing I finished on any given day.) My children were grown […]
The Completion Stage
The past two weeks, I’ve talked about the stages we go through in our writing projects, including the challenges at each stage and ways to keep from derailing. After we have prepared the work-in-progress, let it germinate, worked on it, then deepened and shaped it, we are ready to complete the work. “There is a completion […]