The Write Focus
When I was at school, I wanted to be a librarian. I did my work experience in the local library and I just loved being surrounded by books on a daily basis. The career guidance teacher told me I would have to spend at least four years at university to follow my dream. Well that’s not happening, I told her, I need a job not more education.
I never once linked my love of books to thinking of writing as a career path. My Granddad was always telling me I had a great imagination and I should be writing books but at sixteen, all I was writing was my diary. I still have it and believe me, that’s something that will never see an editor’s table.
It might not have occurred to me because I didn’t spend much time in my English classes. I was always out in the corridor, sent out for talking too much, and awaiting the wrath of the Headmaster who got so used to seeing me there, he just used to shake his head and walk on. I wasn’t bad at English, I just wasn’t very good and I know I’m not the only one.
Simon Whaley, author of The Positively Productive Writer, says in the introduction of his book, ‘Do I have a degree in writing? No. Did I get a good grade in my English O level? No (I scraped through with a C grade, which in those days was the lowest pass.)’
So it seems that not all writers start out with any inkling that they are going to be writers and the school system isn’t a true reflection of a writer’s skills which of course is good news to all those writers out there that aren’t too proud of their English grades.
But somewhere along the line, I decided that writing was what I really wanted to do. I wanted to write articles, books, novels – anything and everything but I didn’t know where to start and I didn’t know what to focus on.
As a life and creativity coach, I see this problem come up time and time again for writers who want to make writing a career choice and not just beginners; writers who want to try a new genre, writers who are trying to escape a day job, writers who are making a living but want to write something completely different. I found life coaching a great way of helping me to focus on my own writing as well as helping others to focus on theirs.
Life coaching is about finding your focus, delving deep within yourself to find out where you want to go with your life and seeing what needs to change in order for you to fulfil your life’s dreams. It looks at where you are in the present and where you want to be in the future. It’s a journey of self-discovery with achievable goals manifested. Life coaching looks at your life in a holistic way and helps you to plan for success and to build your life around your goals.
Coaching can help you to be a better writer. Not because it’s going to wave a wand over your creative skills and instantly give you the best literary skills in the country but because it will help you to clear out the clutter, get rid of unwanted negative thoughts and free you up to concentrate on the writing that is important to you, the writing that you want to focus on.
Coaching has its roots in enabling sports trainers to encourage their students to perform better. Creativity coaching is a relatively new field that helps writers and other creative people to move forward on their chosen path. It’s not therapy or counselling but a way of assessing yourself in the present and moving yourself towards a positive future. Of course, there are many life coaches and creativity coaches that can help you as a client but you can also coach yourself with the many tips and exercises that this book contains. We’ll look at life coaching, neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) and cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) techniques that can really help you and your writing ambitions.
Writers are jugglers. They have thoughts about new projects, half finished pieces of work, research to do and publishers to talk to about proposals. From having original ideas to selling them to the appropriate marketplace, there is a lot going on in a writer’s life.
And this is as well as the everyday stuff that has to be dealt with. Not everyone can be creative all of the time. Writers may have a day job that takes time and energy, children that need their love and attention or elderly relatives that need care. Life throws up obstacles and challenges that we have to face and moments when we doubt ourselves and our writing abilities. It all conspires against a writing career but that’s where life coaching can help.
The trick is to make time for your writing regardless of all the other demands in your life. This can be hard to do if you don’t have a focus. If you just think I’ll spend a couple of hours on Saturday morning doing my creative thing but you don’t specify to yourself what that is, you might spend the hour thinking of a short story you could start on, a screenplay that you feel would be just the thing directors are looking for or some research you could do for a new book but you won’t actually get started. You won’t knuckle down to your creative work and before you know it your time has gone with nothing to show for it.
One of the best ways to achieve your creative goal is to focus your mind with a creative purpose visualisation. This will help you to hone in on what you really want to do. You can do this at any stage in your writing career but it is especially useful when you are in between writing projects and aren’t sure what to focus on next.
Pick a quiet time when you can relax without interruption. Turn off the phone, close the door and sit in a comfortable position or if you prefer, find a space outside where you feel peaceful and can concentrate without distraction.
Close your eyes and imagine yourself in a very plush hotel. You have been asked to attend a prestigious award-giving event. You are sitting with friends and family right at the front, waiting for someone to come to the podium. When they do, they announce the main award. As everyone starts applauding, the award winner comes to the podium. It is you in the future!
Let your mind imagine what you say next as you give your acceptance speech.
• What is the award for?
• What have you achieved?
• How does this make you feel?
Feel yourself accepting the award, thanking the people who have come here especially to see you and absorb your accomplishment for a few moments.
You may be surprised at your creative purpose. When I did this myself, I imagined I was receiving an award for a historical book. I’ve written a couple of historical articles and I do love history but I never thought that this would resurface as something I would be truly proud of and would really want to do.
I collect ideas and the historical novel is just one of them. I have lots and lots of ideas for all different types of writing. I might never actually decide on some of these ideas and go all the way with them but I collect them nevertheless for when I need inspiration. The problem with this is that sometimes I find I can’t settle on any one idea. I can’t find my focus.
If this sounds like you then I have one way of narrowing down the field for you and it’s as simple as using a rating system. List your ideas on a sheet of paper then go through them first to see what is doable right now. Not when you have new technology to help you, have bought supplies or have done the research – what could you start today?
This will narrow down your list measurably. Then ask yourself – how passionate am I about this idea? Give each item a rating from one to ten. Cross out anything below a seven. If you’re not passionate about your project then you won’t motivate yourself to complete it. You only want to start something that you can focus on and if you are passionate about it, it will take up your thoughts and goad you into action.
This should leave you with only one or two glowing ideas. It’s ok to focus on more than one idea if you are able to – many writers work on several projects at any one time. I often have a few projects on the go at once but these are ones that I allot time to and know that I will be able to focus on and complete. It might be a short article, a book synopsis and the current manuscript that I am working on but each has its place and time.
Professor Costas Markides of the London Business School developed a strategy for engaging business people in new ideas, decisions or plans. It can be adapted for use by writers to help you to focus on your desired project by working through the four stages of emotional commitment. The stages are:
• I know
• I understand
• Yes, I think I can
• I will
The first stage ‘I know’ is about arming yourself with as much information about your project as possible. So if you want to write a historical novel, you know what research you want to do, which publisher you will aim your work at and you have thought about a time scale for your work.
The second stage ‘I understand’ helps you to think of what this writing project will mean to you. Why do it? What will it bring you? How will it make you feel? When you understand the significance of your idea then you can decide whether this is the focus you need to take.
‘Yes, I think I can’ is the third stage and this comes when you have weighed up your project and you consider whether you can commit to it fully and see it through to its end. The transition from this stage to the next seems to be the hardest for writers. Like I said before, I have many ideas so I can get to this stage with a handful of projects that I know I can do but will I actually do them?
And this brings us to the decision, the decision to focus on that one project or a few if you can juggle them, but the ones you can and will focus on. The ‘will’ is so important here. Yes, you think you can but to have the will means to have the focus and to ultimately decide that you are going to see your creative work to completion. Not just start it or do a bit but see it through.
Visualisation is a really helpful tool that you can use to boost your self-esteem and to increase your confidence over the success of a new project. We often self-talk ourselves out of writing projects by thinking negatively about the outcome. We say things to ourselves like ‘I don’t think this is really going to work’ or ‘I don’t think the world is ready for me to do this’ and ‘No one’s going to like my writing’. This doesn’t help us to focus. It doesn’t help us to feel that this is the right project for us and that what we are doing is worthwhile.
You can use visualisation to see the success of your project in the future, to see yourself achieving and accomplishing your goal and this in turn will help you to focus on your writing as you work towards your goal.
As in the creative purpose section, find a quiet time and space and see yourself working on your writing project, see it coming to fruition and imagine the outcome – the finished piece and its reception. If you can imagine the outcome of your current project, it can help you to focus in on it as something you really want to achieve and complete.
If you are still really stuck on what to focus on, you can try mind mapping or brainstorming. This can also help you to decide on what to focus on in more depth. First, take a piece of paper and write down your main idea.
Think of all the ways in which you could develop this idea. Take a coloured pen and add branches off of your main word to list in what ways this idea could be expanded. It doesn’t matter how big or small, just add them all in.
Don’t think too hard; just write down anything and everything that comes to mind. Let ideas surface and write them down. We are not looking for works of art, we are just generating a flow of ideas that you can take or leave once you have considered them later on. Here is your opportunity to write anything down you would like to focus on.
Leave your mind map for a few days then go back to it. Pick out the top three creative ideas you had. Now brainstorm each one. Think about how you can start working on your best idea. It could be that now you have a sudden burst of inspiration and are ready to start. If not, break your idea down into smaller steps. Are there things you can do to prepare yourself – like research, Internet browsing or reading a related book?
As a creativity coach, I advise writers to chunk their ideas down. This is a well tested NLP technique that can help you to make your writing seem more realistic and more doable. One of my clients recently told me that he had an idea for a book but it would be an in-depth scientific book that would mean a lot of research and he just didn’t know where to start. I asked him to break down his idea into steps so he had a list that read something like – plan chapters, do research, write a proposal, get an expert to write the introduction, find quotes from the professionals, and so on. Then I asked him to take each one of these steps again and break it down. So for planning chapters, he would write chapter titles, work out the number of chapters, decide on the focus of each chapter, etc. I asked him to pick one and commit to it during the following week. He chose writing the chapter titles but this was enough of a smaller task to make him believe he could manage the whole project and within the week, he had actually planned out a chapter list, titles and the focus for each chapter. Sometimes starting a project can be the hardest task of all but by chunking down what seems to be an insurmountable body of work into manageable pieces, it can help you to focus on developing and ultimately completing that project.
Once you have decided on your focus, the project you are going to undertake, you have the extra job of focusing on it at any given time. So you have those precious hours on Saturday mornings but if you sit there checking your Facebook page, stroking the cat and staring out of the window, it’s still not going to be a productive session.
Many writers have a ritual that they go through before giving their complete attention to the work in hand. It could be lighting a candle, doing a visualisation or spending a few moments deep breathing to calm the mind. It could be chucking out the cat, drinking a cup of coffee whilst looking at yesterday’s work or turning off the phone and turning on the computer. Whatever it is, it signals that now is the time to write.
Create your own ritual that tells you that this is your writing time. It’s not for anything else. It’s for focusing on your project. When the ritual is over, it’s time for work.
When I asked around my writing colleagues how they settled down to focus on the task at hand, they came up with some illuminating stories. Sarah, a fiction writer, said, “I live near an old bookstore and they do the best coffee! I start my writing day by sitting amongst other writers and readers, notebook at the ready. I think about what I want to get done today and make any notes for plot points, characters or settings I want to include in my current story. Then I go home and with no excuses, turn on the computer and get started.”
Claire has a different way. “I have children that need to go to school, a house that will need cleaning and animals to feed. Once they are done, I spend 15-20 minutes on yoga stretches and use deep-breathing to clear my mind. If I feel too energetic to sit and type, I turn on the digital recorder and talk my way around the house developing the next stage of my story as I pace about. I know I’ll have to sit down to type at some point but I have to use up some energy first.”
Suzanne Ruthven, author of Life-Writes, The Country Writer’s Craft, How To Write for the How-To Markets, The Pagan Writer’s Guide and Horror Upon Horror: How to Write a Horror Novel says, “First thing in the morning, I spend an hour in bed with a cup of tea to plan what’s got to be done that day. If I don’t have this ‘thinking time’, I find it very difficult to get started.”
And Sarah Zama, a fantasy writer and illustrator, has an interesting way of starting her writing sessions. “All the main characters of my story have their own song. A song that for some reason makes me think of them. Before I start writing, I play the song connected to the character that will appear in that day’s writing. It helps me get going in the right frame of mind.”
Whatever way gets you in the writing mood, use it to focus on your intentions for the day.