Category Archives: Writing

Making Time and Place and Space to Create

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The theme this week is maintenance. However you put it—upkeep, chores—we all have stuff that needs to get done, pretty much all the time. Dishes, laundry, bed-making, grocery shopping, working. Not all chores are necessities, but some are. Not all chores are boring or inconvenient, but some are. Chore lists are like minimalists: no two are alike.

What’s on my chore list? Those five above rank pretty high on my daily & weekly lists. I’ve also got feeding the cats, watering the plants, vacuuming, balancing the checkbooks, paying the bills. And writing.

Yes, you read that right. I put writing on my to-do list. Every single day.

I wanted to be a writer because I love words, I love language, I love writing. I became a writer by making a daily practice of it. Equal parts passion and persistence. Both are important. Persistence maybe more so.

So, yeah, sometimes writing feels like a chore. Some days I’d much rather park myself in bed with my clowder of cats and a good book. Some days I’d actually rather do laundry and dishes and grocery shopping. Putting writing on the daily to-do list accomplishes two things: it brings writing out of the imaginative, perfect ether into the real world and it creates the space I need in my day to actually do it (I hate an unfinished to-do list).

In the opening chapter of The War of Art, Stephen Pressfield details his day. The most important sentence on that first page—“I sit down and plunge in”—pretty much says it all. Those six words embody the most straightforward way to creativity. Anne Lamott, in Bird by Bird says, “Writing is like milking a cow: the milk is so rich and delicious, and the cow is so glad you did it.” In other words, writing is a chore the writer must do—and chore it may be, but the result is filling and nutritious, and the relief is incredible.

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Making Place

Depending on your personality, this might be the easiest of all the steps. If you’re already a committed minimalist or simplicity-seeker, you might know what I’m about to say. You must dedicate/designate/devise some sort of space in which your creativity is going to happen. It could be your desk. It could be your bed (preferably when your loved one is not sleeping in it). It could be in the bathroom (not as uncommon as you might think). It could be on the floor next to your desk (that’s where I do it). It could be on the couch, at the kitchen table, or in your walk-in closet (but, wait, you’re a writer, so you can’t afford a walk-in closet). Honestly, it doesn’t really matter where you choose, so long as it’s a comfortable spot where you don’t mind spending a lot of time, and if possible, a spot where the people in your house will leave you alone while you’re in it. Think of it as a sacred meditation spot.

You want the space to be clear of clutter. It should be a reasonably open and empty space. If you’re a mess-making creative, pick up after yourself when you’re finished with each session so that every time your return to the space it is clean and ready to nourish your creative desire.

Making Space

This one could take a little bit more work, and might require some collaboration. Space is different from place, in that place is tangible, and space is not. Space is where the writing lives, but place is where you go to open up the space and let it come out. Space is a mental thing.

Do you want to write? Paint? Draw? Take photos? Learn the art of flower arranging? Play music?

Good. The first step is figuring that out.

The second step is admitting it (it helps to admit out loud, to others, preferably at a large social gathering where most everyone you know will hear you and ask follow-up questions the next time they see you). The third step is thinking about how you’re going to make it happen—maybe you need to make a place, maybe you need to make time, maybe you need both. Perhaps you need supplies or a creativity partner.

Lastly, you’ll want inspiration, and that’s a daily process. Seek inspiration everywhere. In uncooked vegetables and radio broadcasts and poems and the feel of your pet’s fur. In the opening chords of a song you love and the smell of baking bread and the contrast of colors available all around you, if you’d just look. There is a lot of space in inspiration, and a lot of inspiration in space.

Making Time

Busy is a busy does. A lot of us live our lives as though we are in chronic deficit of time. Which isn’t exactly true. I understand that life is a big, complicated, crazy thing. I understand work and commuting and kids and pets and families and chores. With the exception of kids, I’ve got all of those too. I understand the concept of busy. I used to be busy myself. I’m still often busy—though now I’m usually busy writing something or other.

Here’s the thing about time. If you let it get away from you, it gets away. If you pretend like it doesn’t exist, you’ll never accomplish what you want to accomplish. There are 24 hours in the day, and you need to find a way to devote at least one of them to your creative pursuits.

I find the to-do list very helpful: I put writing on there as #1, and 9 out of 10 days, I make it happen. On the tenth day I don’t kick myself. I rest. And then I get back to it.

Put creativity on your to-do list, or on your calendar, or on a sticky note attached to your computer/bathroom mirror/refrigerator. Write in big letters. In pen. Even better, in permanent marker.

And then do it. Over and over and over again, until it becomes habit—because habits are really just behaviors that you’ve given a lot of time.

(PS. Things to eliminate in order to make time for creativity include: television, drinking, cleaning (believe me, the dirty dishes will still be there in an hour), shopping, Facebook, email, any and all work you might bring home from your job. Make sure you continue to make time for talking with your partner, playing with your kids, petting your animals, brushing your teeth, eating healthy meals, getting exercise, and relaxation (because usually making space happens when you relax).

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Space, place, time: plunge in!

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Getting and Maintaining Focus

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We all have those days. The ones where our energy just seems all over the place. You sit down to write a short something or other and the next thing you know you’re making a cup of coffee or playing on Facebook. You pick up a book to read and without realizing it your mind wanders to what you might eat for dinner.

My own energy has been a little scattered this weekend: it’s picked up a bunch of signals and rather than responding methodically to each one, I’ve been haphazardly jumping from task to task. Since this is just one weekend, I let it go. And truth be told, I did get a thing or two accomplished. Still, I prefer a more focused approach, and below are a few suggestions on how to get and maintain focus.

Passion: ”Passion is the genesis of genius.” —Tony Robbins * This is really the driving force. Without passion, the task at hand will never really hold your attention. Sometimes I start a blog post and three days later I haven’t finished it because every time I sit down to write it, I get distracted. If that’s the case, I delete the post and start over. Same goes for the novel: if I start writing a scene and several days later I still haven’t finished it, it gets consigned to the dust pile. Now, I know we can’t all be passionate all the time about everything we do. But when it comes to creativity and/or lifestyle, passion is the number one fire starter; the golden ticket; the key that unlocks every door. Cultivate passion as often as possible, about as many things as you can.  

Persistance:  And remember “Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.”

Eliminate distractions: That’s just too obvious isn’t it? But how many of us actually take the time to eliminate our most pernicious distractions? First, identify them. I’m really, really prone to jumping onto the internet at any given moment. I finally learned just to turn my airport off while I’m writing. I encourage you to do the same, if you’re an internet junkie. There are also programs like Chrome Nanny which will block certain websites at certain times and display a clever little “Shouldn’t you be working?” message if you  attempt to distract yourself. Other distractions include: cute cats, telephone calls, small children, cocktail hour, shopping, eating, etc. If you’ve got a busy household, perhaps getting out of it and sitting at a cafe to work is the way to go. If you’ve got a partner, enlist their help for a silent hour or two. If being solo is a distraction in and of itself, get a creativity buddy to work with a few times a week (but no idle chatting, because that defeats the purpose).

Set goals: Nice, manageable, accomplishable goals. Goals like Write 500 words or Spend 1 hour drawing or Take 10 photographs. Choose goals you know you can make happen in one day. Success begets success, and if you set yourself up to succeed, you will continue to returning to the task.

Push, push: This is sort of the opposite of what I just said, but can be just as important. Create challenges for yourself. This weekend I decided to push myself out of my comfy, solitary writing zone and sign up for a writing workshop. Pushing at your edges a little bit can really stimulate focus.

Reward yourself: Eat an ice cream cone. Get a massage. Take a nap. Go for a walk. Whatever it is, just make sure you treat yourself for your hard work. All work and no play does not inspire passion. Don’t push yourself so hard that you stop enjoying whatever it is you enjoy. Focus will stick around if you use it wisely and then give it a nice rest.

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Recommended Reading: Leo Babauta’s Zen to Done

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On Rewriting

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“I have rewritten—often several times—every word I have ever published. My pencils outlast their erasers.” —Vladimir Nabokov

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Now that I’m elbows deep in the second draft of my novel, I realize something: Writing the first draft was a piece of cake.

Rewriting is more like a bowl of oatmeal. It isn’t too bad, but it’s definitely not cake.

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The better metaphor for rewriting is that the first draft is like a messy closet. You know, the closet where you just throw anything and everything that comes your way. The one that is full to the bursting point, threatening to explode when you open it.

The first draft is messy as all get-out, as it should be.

The second draft is all about winnowing—it’s time for simplifying and minimizing.

It’s time to start asking questions. Time to use your most discerning eye. Time to take that mess out into the light and see what suits you. There will be things you want to keep even though you know they have no place. There will be lines and words you are sentimental about—I find the most difficult parts to delete are the ones I wrote first (some of them before I even knew I was writing a novel)—and this is unsurprisingly like how difficult it is to get rid of baby shoes or the first dress you ever bought yourself that no longer fits or is in any way flattering.

Inspected closely, the items we own say a lot about us, who and what we’ve been. Sometimes, in order to grow, those old items need to go. Same thing happens during rewriting. Characters you thought were one way will shift and morph and come out in the end as something very different. In order to make it work, you might need to let go of liking a character and instead allow her to become who she is.

The items we own may give perspective into who we are, but they do not define us. And so it is with a story. Things are going to change in the story, not everything that was recorded the first time around will remain. The essential self of the story will remain. It might say That doesn’t fit me or I no longer need that but it will still be there after it’s been stripped down to its essence.

Actually, it’ll probably be better once all that extraneous stuff is gone.

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PS. I created a new author website for myself…so you can follow all the exciting news about my writing publications, should you feel so inspired.