I think any writer, or anyone who must pull ideas from the depths of her (his? their? faer? zis? xyr?)* own brain, struggles, sometimes unsuccessfully, to stay on task.
My work in progress, A Long Marriage, has been going splendidly. The end of the first draft is in sight. I have a crude outline of the next few chapters of section four, and a single sentence about what will happen in the fifth and final section. I work almost every morning. On the first day of a new chapter I figure out the point of view and what will happen. I’m satisfied, knowing that the next day I will begin to write. It is in the writing phase that I struggle against distractions.
Today, as I began writing a new and distressing chapter (somebody dies), I know what to expect. The first sentence is the hardest: where to start? how to start? I close my eyes, push on the door into the void, promptly fall asleep. Wake up, make more coffee, empty the dishwasher while I wait for it to brew. Return to my chair. Where will the chapter begin? The married couple will sit at the dinner table making plans. I think about tonight’s dinner, find the new pasta recipe, look in the refrigerator for capers. Return to my chair. All of this is throat clearing, though if you attended a lecture which began with half an hour of throat-clearing you would surely leave.
Inspiration on hold
image by cottonbro at pexels
I write a first sentence. If I’m lucky, a second will follow and it will all begin to flow. I’ll end with as few as 500 words or as many as 1000, which I will read the next day, revising just a bit to get the engine started again. In a week or two I’ll have arrived at a (sometimes) satisfying conclusion to the chapter, and then I’ll be on to the next.
Surely I’ll find 500 words in here
I’ve been writing this blog for a dozen years, and writing fiction considerably longer. My greatest asset is my confidence that I will find what I’m looking for in the void, that distractions are part of the process, that fiddling around will eventually result in a melody that pleases me. I no longer feel desperate or anxious, I don’t castigate myself as I stumble around. And when my reluctant mind finds a new distraction, I’m amused.
The internet is of course the great distracter. Years ago I discovered the Freedom app. http://freedomto.com. I’m not sure I have the strength of character to write, or even have a fulfilling life, without it. With this app I block Facebook for twenty-two hours a day, the New York Times and my favorite games until mid-afternoon. Each morning when I start work, I block the entire internet for at least two hours. If I run into something I’d like to research, I type “RESEARCH” and leave it for later.
But when the mind is not ready to write it will find the path to avoidance, and this morning it found the path in Freedom. I went there to see how much longer I had (clock-watching is another excellent distraction) and noticed “Focus Sounds” on the left of the screen. They are supposed to help one concentrate on work. I opened that menu and to my delight saw I could listen to sounds from Coffee Shops in eleven cities around the world as well as three Office sounds with odd names (Virtucon?), five Nature sounds, six Music sounds, and five sounds from Brain.fm.**
Now, you know I had to listen to every one of them. I can report that New York coffee shops are noisier than Los Angeles coffee shops, and people in London coffee shops sound like Americans. People in offices rustle paper and cough.
I never write in coffee shops
image: lisa fotio at pexels
As for Nature, Sonoma is full of lovely birdsong, Moraine Park in Colorado has a single annoying bird, and at Beach Haven you can’t hear the surf because of a tinkling bell; I don’t believe it’s a buoy.
It was clear I wasn’t ready to go deep into this difficult chapter. I closed the document and began writing this blog post.
*Finding the list of nonbinary pronouns briefly pulled me out of the zone.
**I looked this up later. This app is supposed to help you focus or relax. The intro video says it is based in neuroscience; they’ve done large-scale experiments to see what works best. The soothing (or smug) male voice instructed me to focus on my work, and try the music for fifteen minutes in order to get “in the zone.” I think the zone is next door to Hell; after fifteen seconds I wanted to fling my laptop across the room.
image: brain.fm image: iconcom at pexels