Today was supposed to be different. I planned to lift weights at the gym and then work on my novel at the coffee shop. I have not met either goal.
Instead, I procrastinated. I can’t even remember what I did this morning. Then I went grocery shopping, hoping to prepare healthy food for my girlfriend and I for most of the week.
Alas, my afternoon attempt at frying tofu cubes to a crisp for my vegetarian variation on kung pao chicken failed. The oil was not hot enough. What heat it did have dissipated quickly as soon as I dropped the half-centimeter cubes into the oil.
The last time I cooked this dish was in a commercial kitchen. I now realize frying tofu cubes at home is nowhere near as simple and perhaps even impossible without the right equipment.
I had to throw out the soggy mess.
Rationally, I know it’s just one meal, and I can always make the vegetables into something else. But I still hear the invisible parent within me shouting, wondering why I can’t make a dish I’ve made half a dozen times before, why I can’t motivate myself to don a pair of shorts and head to the gym, why I can’t drive to the coffee shop to escape the temptations of on-demand reruns, guitars, and Madden 21.
My girlfriend says I am too hard on myself. A previous psychologist would concur. I can hear him now, “Respect yourself.”
But my current psychologist and I made a pact. He and I agreed on four goals to work on over the last month, and I’ve barely met one.
I’m trying to be kind. I’m trying to remind myself I edited my novel for an hour yesterday. I opened my laptop qua 21st-century typewriter today. I’m writing now.
But impossible standards and unrealistic expectations are my curse. I could blame the Protestant work ethic of my parents. I could blame the all-or-nothing thinking that accompanies ADHD. Either way, they have become part of me, stations on my lifelong search for unobtainable perfection.
I smell the pork rubbed with brown sugar and freshly cracked Chinese five spices roasting in the oven. Perhaps we’ll have dinner after all.
Eliminating distractions is essential to becoming a good writer.
Stephen King, in his acclaimed memoir, On Writing, advises aspiring authors their writing space “really needs only one thing: a door which you are willing to shut.” He writes:
The closed door is your way of telling the world and yourself that you mean business; you have made a serious commitment to write and intend to walk the walk as well as talk the talk.
He cautions against libraries, park benches, and public spaces because he believes you need a room of your own, a place you feel truly inspiring, your own creative sanctuary. He recommends drawing the curtains so you cannot see the world outside. Such a place should have no television, no video games, no tools one can use to fritter away the time as though each of us will live forever.
Close your internet browser
Fine advice at the turn of the millennium, but King never anticipated the world twenty years later. How could he? Who, in 2000, would have known that the very tools we use to write are also portals to bookstores, clothing stores, stores for purchasing more distractions? What would King say now about television’s transformation from worn reruns filled with dull, low-budget commercials to high-definition, commercial-free content available on demand?
And what of Facebook and Twitter? Online social life has evolved from teenagers late-night chatting with friends they’ve actually met to near constant interfacing with acquaintances spread across time zones. Every year, people around the world devote more and more time to social media, from 90 minutes per day in 2012 to almost two-and-a-half hours in 2019.
Unfortunately, for the twenty-first-century writer, this and more is available at a mouse click. The keyboards we should hear clacking away on our latest novellas instead beat irregularly to the rhythm of our palpitating hearts. We read and worry about things we cannot control: coronavirus, presidential elections, our friends’ opinions of our lifestyle. We spend mere seconds working on things we can control, let alone a few minutes writing.
So how does the writer write? How does one get anything done at all?
Isolate yourself so you can focus
Per King’s advice, I write with my office door closed, in a space I decorated to trap myself with my adventurous, romantic spirit. No, I don’t mean the groomed aristocrats populating Tessa Dare’s historical chick porn. I mean the cynical idealist willing to sail the seven seas in search of his own soul. Picture Hemingway relaxing in a Cuban cigar lounge after returning from a safari only to discover the world as he knew it no longer exists.
For the less dramatic, I suggest isolating yourself from the online universe. Temporarily disconnect your WiFi or uninstall the time-sucking apps from your phone. If you need the internet for research, as I do, then turn off browser notifications and Windows 10 pop-ups. I use Linux because it doesn’t come prepackaged with programs incessantly reminding me about yesterday’s email, today’s news, and tomorrow’s dermatology appointment.
Another trick: Use Focus Writer or the Focus mode in Microsoft Word. These block the entire screen except for the page you’re writing on and foster concentration.
Get out of the house
Unlike King, I also suggest getting out of the house. Even science fiction and horror authors can learn from reality. Some of my best material, in fact, even some of my exact scenes, have been borrowed from interactions with and observations of the world and people around me.
Coffee shops are great, but make sure you visit one where you feel inspired and comfortable. Soccer moms sprinting through Starbucks is not conducive to concentration. Frequenting the same coffee shop quickly turns it into your second office. This is a good thing.
Establish a writing schedule and goals
Psychologist Paul Silva in How to Write a Lot prescribes schedules and recommends goals. He instructs writers to remove what he calls “specious barriers,” or excuses we make for not writing. If you truly have a barrier, remove it. If you see an obvious distraction, eliminate it.
Goals can be set and measured in time, word count, pages, or chapters. I go to my local coffee shop to write for at least one hour three times per week. If I write 500 words in that hour, great. If I struggle to hammer out 75, that’s okay, too, as long as I’m making progress.
Find your muse, embrace bursts of inspiration
Last, but not least, embrace bursts of inspiration when it arises. Channel your angst. Spill your sadness. Pour life’s greatest joys and disappointments onto your page.
A friend once told me, “Heartbreak is your muse.” Find your own muses. And when you do, never let the daughters of Zeus out of your sight.
Better yet, take them home. Close your door. And eliminate distractions.
