Distraction
Finally, the biggest bugaboo for killing my process, and likely yours as well: distraction.
It’s amazing to me the things I’d sometimes rather do than sit down and write. Laundry comes to mind. Sweeping up dog hair. Setting small pieces of paper on fire. Exercising. Sometimes even opening the mail and paying bills seems better than staring at the blank page, trying to force my fingers to type.
There’s nothing that can be done for those outside distractions except to overcome them, mostly by implementing some of the techniques I mentioned above to set the right time and space or to find motivation and confidence to just do it.
Internally, though, within the writing process itself, two specific techniques to inoculate myself from distraction are worth mentioning.
First, I realized early on that I would often spend inordinate amounts of time editing and “perfecting” what I had previously written. This felt like writing. But, I soon realized, it wasn’t.
It was a distraction.
Especially since it often amounted only to happy-to-glad changes. Revision and editing need to occur, no doubt, but not at the expense of actual writing.
So, I set a rule for myself: each time I sit down, I let myself reread and edit no more than three paragraphs. That allows me to clean up a small amount of roughage and ramp up my immersion in the scene and the tone of the story or article so that I don’t suddenly start with a different voice, or leave a big gap in a plot or in the logical progression of an article’s argument.
Three paragraphs take me maybe five minutes to reread and edit. And then I find the next few words or ideas flood back. I can quickly jot another perhaps 500 or 1000 words, a half hour of steady work. Then a break, an allowance to edit three more paragraphs, and boom, I’m on it again, in it again.
Whether the break is a few minutes, a day, or a week, this allowance for a very short runway of editing keeps me focused on the production of new material. Then, later, the more major editing processes can occur once a natural pause – or preferably the conclusion of the piece itself – is reached.
*Note: I’m also a ruthless editor of my own work. If, on rereading something, it doesn’t absolutely sing, I do not hesitate to kill it – firmly believing in the kill thy darlings missive.
Finally, to combat distraction, I set a word count or a goal. I know how long certain things take for me to write. Like I said, if I’m focused, a half hour is about 1000 words of fiction. If I know the subject well, a half-hour is also sufficient for 1000 words of non-fiction. For academic writing that requires research and citation, it’s maybe 400-500 words. Setting that word goal, matching it against the opportunity time I’ve decided to recoup from my life (those hours in an airline seat, that fifteen minutes in a dentist’s waiting room, that morning in a coffee shop), makes me focus better, strive to meet that tangible goal, and feel some measure of success on achieving it – at least until I finally permit myself to reread and edit the dreck I scribbled down.
To recap…
No one gets it right the first time.
No one sits down to write and stands up eighteen hours later with a completed opus. [Well, actually Truman Capote apparently wrote most of Other Voices in a single berserker session, but he’s the exception, not the rule.]
To write well and professionally, I’ve had to develop some processes that both free me and bind me to the writing. While my processes might not transcribe exactly into your life, your technique, your psychological needs or energy levels, I believe as writers we must all go through some painful moments in developing our approach. I’ve shared a few thoughts on how I trick myself into creating conditions where space/time, confidence, motivation, and a lack of distraction all conspire to enable my writing to flow.
What are your gremlins? (And how do you keep them as nice starry-eyed, inspirational Gizmos?)
Benjamin Buchholz is the author of One Hundred and One Nights (Little, Brown: 2011) and Private Soldiers (WHS Press: 2007). He’s sold two books on spec this past year, one forthcoming from Da Capo in spring 2020, tentatively titled The Tightening Dark, and one to a private publisher. He’s published professional academic and ghost-written work, numerous stories and poems, and has taught fiction through Gotham Writer’s Workshop. He is an officer in the US Army Reserve, an Arabic linguist, the CEO of a start-up intelligence company, and a volunteer member of Burning Man’s “Stories from the City” project. Find him on Twitter @mialaylawalayla, Insta @buchholzbw, and Medium: Benjamin Buchholz.
