I seem to be getting worse at multi-tasking as I get older. Maybe that’s because the whole concept of multi-tasking is a trap.
Multi-tasking is like going to a wine tasting and putting ALL the wines in the same glass just to be efficient.
When I multitask I feel like I dilute the quality of each by not focusing on any.
Or maybe that’s just me.
Which isn’t to say that several things, several projects, can’t happen simultaneously. It’s about attention.
Last two weeks my attention has been on my writing. My creativity and completing a piece of writing for submission with limited time. And then recuperating.
I’ve seen writers on the vlogs I follow crank out a submittable piece of flash or a short story in as little as half an hour. I am not one of those people.
My writing style is different. My process is VERY (a word were told to ruthlessly remove from all writing, but I won’t today.) VERY different. I’ve come to terms with that. Tantrums at the unfairness of an aged, splintering brain usually on comprise 5 minutes of my time now.
It took me nearly a month to conceive of and complete a piece of flash fiction that I sent off last Sunday. (my usual blog day.) The piece is 894 words long.
Comparatively this blog post at this point is: 232 words long and I’ve been at it about 10 minutes.
My point is, the completion of the story had to be my focus. Hence! I was not able to get a blog post created AND I haven’t been reading fiction for those two weeks.
- A couple reasons:
- Once I finished His Family by Ernest Poole (our first Pulitzer Prize book in The Longest Reading Tour Ever series) I chose to try a book that had been on my TBR pile for awhile and indulge in some 100% entertainment reading.
- I could not get into that book and I hate abandoning books. So instead, I procrastinated reading.
- I did start re-reading Writing Down The Bones by Natalie Goldman.
Writing Down The Bones is still the creative pump I found it to be on first reading years (and YEARS ) ago. While not a writing instruction manual, it frees me to write what, how, and about things I care about. Things that mean something… to me. Which infuses my writing with more vitality. If not to the publishers I send it to, certainly to me when I re-read it. And to not just journal.
Ugh! Journaling, in the trendy, contemporary sense, for me is creative suicide! I said what I said. It is a self-indulgent work-killer.
I can use a ‘journal format’ to record things I may want to remember, a flash of insight regarding human nature, a mannerism, some fleeting beauty, a haunting thought, an interesting ‘what if’. But not the ‘record my feelings, diary-like, journal.
As a writer, feelings (which, wake-up call, tend to be universal) are to be conveyed not merely recorded.
Which leads me to where I am now. First drafting.
My favorite and least favorite all in one. I love a new project, I hate how much I hate my writing on first drafts.
For my process, I just write, just keep, as Natalie Goldman advocates, the pen moving. My first drafts are disjointed, bloated, they stink. They are essentially week-old shark attack victims found washed up in the August sun. Sad, tragic, and repulsive.
But even disgusting shark attack victims are somebody’s baby. And these are mine. So I write down everything that occurs to me in thinking about my story, no matter how in the weeds it goes. A conversation between characters that will never ever make it into the story may help me uncover the tidbit of description or demeanor that will tie the story together, so down it goes.
I would love to follow the advice of Margaret Atwood and try to get the whole crappy story out in one sitting. Just write like a fiend until it’s all word-vomited out, but my life is too full of interruptions. I get up at 5 and try to focus enough to write until 6. Pick up when the house winds down about 10 and write until about 11.
This works about 3 days a week. Or 2. Maybe 2.
The rest has to wait until the weekend. I try to keep my schedule as clear as possible so I can dedicate several uninterrupted hours to project(s).
Like my new one. I have to write my head around it instead of having my head around it to write.
Which is where I am now. Now is also when I’ll be able to get back to reading. And since My Brilliant Friend didn’t grab me. I’m moving on.
Back to The Pulitzer Prize Tour. The Longest Read-a-long Tour Ever. And time to start
The Magnificent Ambersons by Boothe Tarkington.
Please, feel free to join me!
For more information see the Pulitzer Prize Post here:https://laurahansonwrites.wordpress.com/2022/01/10/on-deck-for-the-pulitzer-tour/
Laura J. Hanson 