Miranda: Walking the walk (and stumbling)
Well, I was hoping to finish Chapter 3 by Friday. In the end, I didn’t spend more than two hours on Chapter 3 last week. I also spent some time revising my short story, but mainly, I was so distracted by life and work that I forgot about Chapter 3 until Thursday. Then I told myself I could make up the difference over the weekend–but that didn’t happen either.
It is strange to be organizing interviewees, talking to people about my book (on how to manage creativity and motherhood), and tending to this blog daily and yet still manage to “forget about” what I’d intended to accomplish.
Sure, there have been “legitimate” distractions: The new snow blower died in the middle of the last storm, so our driveway is an uneven glacial challenge, which I’m trying to keep navigable with sand and snow-melt. Most household members are recovering from various viral ailments; we’ve been spending time and effort getting the house ready for listing; we sunk half a day in dealing with a heating system problem on Saturday (which at least did NOT turn out to be a frozen pipe, as originally diagnosed). My back is bothering me, so I went to see my chiropractor for an adjustment. Then my mother came over to help with Project Basement on Sunday–followed by the playoff football games (and I actually like watching football). We also learned that my mother-in-law was hospitalized, which is a real worry, although she seems to be OK right now. And of course, being nearly 6 months pregnant, I’m pretty tired at the end of the day. With regular work and domesticity poured on top, driving kids around, there just wasn’t a lot of time on hand for anything else.
The bigger issue though is my mental framework: I want to work on the book; I’m in the middle of Chapter 3 and having fun writing it. But I think I need a hard and fast writing schedule, because without one, there is so much going on that I won’t get to it. I’m too distracted. That isn’t to say that I don’t actually have the time, because I think I do, it’s matter of claiming that time before all the other bonfires take over.
Any suggestions for how I can improve my focus and productivity? I almost feel like I need a live-in coach to continually point out the best way to use my time at any given moment, and keep me on track. But the only coach I can possibly hire is myself–and I don’t seem trustworthy at the moment.
Studio Mothers: Life & Art 
I’d love to help, especially since you’ve ASKED for help, but no one can help you with these priorities and schedules but yourself, because you know what you want to do and what you don’t want to do.
Here’s my one observation/comment: could you think about the time, money, energy, and emotional turmoil associated with selling your house, searching for and buying a new house, packing, showing, closing, attending to all the stupid little niggling details that the buyers invariably want, then trying to make a schedule work where you and your family aren’t MAJORLY inconvenienced AND the fact that this market stinks and you’re pregnant is something I wouldn’t have the time or energy to devote to, but I’ve also felt the “it’s time to move,” and “I want out of here NOW.” so I do understand.
I personaly would, instead, sit my butt in my chair and write. You can NOT make more than 24 hours in a day. Selling, buying, and moving will take the equivalent of MONTHS of your life.
But ultimately you need to balance whether it is going to feel better to stay put and have a book done, or to move at the risk of a book that stays incomplete when the baby comes, isn’t that your self-imposed deadline? What an interesting dilemma… we should all be so lucky!
I think you should give yourself a break! When I was pregnant with my first, I beat myself up a lot for not having much of a head for work. In fact, I could sense that my easy distractibility was hormone-related, but I still wouldn’t let up on myself.
Could the same be going on for you? What can you say “no” to that would let you work? Alternatively, what could help you be more portable? I work on a PDA, which helps immensely (I think I like it better than I would a laptop). Is that a possibility?
What you described would have deep-sixed my writing plans too, even not pregnant, so please don’t feel so bad!
I’ll jump in and offer a suggestion also re: improving focus and productivity. As caseycairo suggests, it may be a bad time for selling a house – the news just now predicts a major drop in the market tomorrow after the big fall in the other world markets today. Everyone is jittery and looking at shrinking savings. I wonder how many people will be able to think about buying with any confidence the money will be there when they need it? But…putting that aside – again, as caseycairo says, you are the only one who can really do for you what needs doing. My technique for really listening to my inner voice, and getting the help I need (from myself) is to use a shamanic technique of traveling to the upper world and seeking advice from a spirit up there. You don’t have to believe in spirits, God, or the like – believing you are having a conversation with your self (higher self) works just as well. The idea is that in a meditative state, one rids oneself of the things that don’t matter, and can better identify where one’s passion (love) is. Just take yourself on a journey “up there”, to the “great library in the sky” or where ever works for you, find your guide (higher self/whatever), and sit down and have a conversation with that person – ask questions, listen. You will be amazed at what will happen. When you haven’t done this, it may sound like so much self delusion. Perhaps – but delusion or not, it is a pretty powerful technique. I often found the will to carry on with something that seemed impossible, self indulgent, or futile. You mentioned wanting to get back to meditating (at least I think you did in an earlier entry) – why not give this a try?
After reading the other responses, I don’t have any legitimate ways to help you cope with all that. I mean, it is A LOT of stressors in your life right now. Why beat yourself up about another one. Just go with the flow. Break your writing goals into smaller (and smaller steps). As in, if I *write* at all today, I get a gold star.
Seriously. Me? I only wrote maybe 1/16th of what I wanted to this weekend. But, well, I *did* write. And that is a success!
I totally agree that writing AT ALL is a success–even if I don’t meet my weekly goals. Even with everything on my plate, I still think I could fit in a bit of regular writing, if only I could get myself to focus. (I certainly find time to surf the internet and read other people’s blogs–which, although often inspiring, should be left for AFTER I’ve written a few paragraphs!) I do feel that my inner voice is saying “you can do this, just figure it out.” But as Christa points out, for some of us, pregnancy seems to bring a temporary layer of ADD. Meanwhile, the next 10 days are going to be extremely busy with house stuff, trying to finish all our projects and move things to storage before we vacate for the floor people. I will lower my expectations a little–instead of finishing Chapter 3, I’ll just try to work on it.
That’s assuming I don’t continue having a bad sinus headache, bordering on migraine, coupled with body aches–that get me out of bed at 4:00 a.m. even though I am NOT ready to be awake!
Here’s another take on it. You obviously have some legitimate things pullling you in different directions. Of course you’re distracted. One thought on this (and I have a few, as you’ll see) is to change your goal from “finish Chapter 3” to “always make good use of my writing time.”
For me, as a writer of large, structured documents, I have never worked sequentially. I also tend to set higher level goals over a longer term rather than chapter by chapter or subject by subject. We all have our own process. I’m not suggesting that your chapter goal is not a good one. It may be. But consider that sometimes a writer can be more efficient just by keeping her tush in the chair for the hours that are designated for writing and–for a while at least (and your project may be beyond this place)–working on what draws her at that moment. Of course, this is all within reason…You can’t spend disproportionate hours on one chapter and ignore the others. We do eventually have to face the drudge.
I guess the point is, spend that time working. Go somewhere where you HAVE no connectivity. Don’t do anything but write during that time. Or give yourself 5 minutes of screw off time at the top of every hour.
The other thing to consider is to play a little mind game with yourself. Think of the baby’s due date as a genuine project deadline as you might have for a client. Tell yourself there is not an option about getting the project completed by that date. It’s amazing how much work can get done with something that feels like a real deadline looming.
For me, the “tush in chair, do what I want” method has always resulted in a surprising amount of output. I always think I’m screwing off but then miraculously everything gets done, as long as the schedule was reasonable to begin with.
(Don’t be shocked, M. This I can do.)
Bets, you’re right about the linear thing–I don’t usually work that way either. But I got to the point that I had ~150 pages of content, spread out all over the book, and I knew it was time to start at the beginning and fill in all the missing gaps. I thought that this would be difficult; that there would be parts that I just “didn’t feel” like writing when they came next–but that hasn’t happened yet. I think, because there is so much clay already in each chapter, that the process isn’t as daunting as moving forward through blank pages.
I think what it comes down to is the “tush in the chair” issue. My tush is indeed in the chair much of the time, but I’m not using that time for writing. I’m working or goofing off. I need to schedule the writing time, however brief it is, and tattoo that to my forehead. I use Outlook to schedule and manage everything else–in both work and domestic fronts–I need to make that work for creative time too.
I do have a book interview scheduled for this morning, so that will be something in the pot 🙂
Yes, absolutely, the time needs to be scheduled, and protected. When I was writing my novel, I would not allow anything to encroach on novel time. (Of course, this is when my house started to fall apart.) If people asked for Saturday plans, I would say, “That’s my writing day.”
Another thought, remembering back to when I first started to write book-type documents, is that you might not really be believing you are going to finish a book. Nothing helps you overcome that feeling than actually finishing one for the first time. Set a goal that you will accept nothing less than a finished draft by such and such a date. You’re going to do it, Miranda. And it’s going to be great.