January 10, 2011

How’s your focus? It was a question I wrestled with all through December as I thought about goals for 2011. Judging by the 2010 goals that didn’t get accomplished, I had lost focus somewhere. I set out like a detective to figure out where–and why.

My calendar was so full of very good things, but I was frequently exhausted and vaguely dissatisfied. (Well, not vaguely actually. It was a very pointed dissatisfaction with the amount of writing I finished on any given day.) What was the reason?

My children were grown and on their own. I had long ago given up time wasters (TV viewing, hanging on the telephone) and most hobbies (quilting, gardening), and yet…the struggle to write for quality periods of time persisted.

A Busy Blur

I realized that I had fallen into the all-too-common trap of substituting being busy for being focused. Could this be you as well? If it is, you’ll need to deal with it–or this year’s goals will go by the wayside too.

Answer the following questions to check your focus:

• Do you know where you’re going?
• If you stay on the road you’re on, where is it leading?
• Are you busy qualifying yourself for a writing life you don’t want?

Pull Back for Better Focus

You may need to get an overview of how you spend your time before you can answer those questions. It can be an eye-opening exercise to keep track of your activities, hour by hour, for a week or two. (A month is even better.) For example, you might truly believe that you spend two hours writing every day, plus one hour marketing, and a fourth hour studying.

After keeping track, you might find you actually write twenty minutes while frequently stopping to check email. Your marketing hour might actually be spent reading about marketing methods, but not truly ever doing any marketing of your own projects. Your hour of studying the magazine article on character development might actually boil down to twenty minutes of study and forty minutes of reading ads and letters to the editor.

Training for What?

Suppose you dream of writing novels. Your time tracker might reveal that your writing time is eaten up by writing free newsletters for two organizations you belong to. Or, if you’re well published, you can’t say no when asked to write an endorsement or review of someone’s new book. (That may not sound like much, but reading the book takes several hours, and a well crafted review takes another hour.) Maybe you haven’t had time to work on your own novel for three days because you’ve been critiquing for other writers or writing guest blogs.

All these things make you feel like you’re furthering your writing career as a novelist–but are you? Or are you busy qualifying yourself for something other than your dream? You’re actually gaining experience as a reviewer, a critiquer, a blogger, and a newsletter writer. (Those are fine jobs, if that’s truly what you want to be doing in the long run.) But if you stay on this road–if you continue to spend a large chunk of your writing time this way–do you like where it will inevitably lead you?

Solution?

Know what your dreams and goals are. We all have our own criteria for choosing goals–and different methods to determine what we’re supposed to do with our writing gifts. (Prayer and journaling work best to clarify things for me.)

Once you’ve decided, don’t be vague about how you intend to get where you want to go. You must live on a higher plane–above the constant demands for your time–and say “no” to things that don’t further those goals.

This year–before attempting 2011′s goals–I dropped two writing-related activities that were qualifying me for a writing life I didn’t even want. I substituted one money-making job that was actually using creative writing, and my online class with Jordan Rosenfeld (author of Make a Scene) starts today. For the assignments, I can use my novel-in-progress. Both of these changes will help qualify me for the writing life I actually want.

What might you change (get rid of OR add) in your writing life to better qualify you for the writing life of your dreams?

3 Comments »

1. 

   This is perfect advice for me right now! I also have very little wasted time in my life, am always busy, but I am not accomplishing as much as I could with the few hours of free time I have made each day. I will be challenging myself to become more focused.

   Comment by Momma Mindy — January 10, 2011 @ 12:35 pm

2. 

   I can relate to this, Kristi. I know I’m spending more time than I want to on marketing-related activities, blogging and writing career peripherals. The marketing stuff is necessary, and I like blogging, but I’ve got to be stricter about scheduling time for both. It’s easy to spend far too long with those activities and find I don’t have the time or energy left over for actual writing. I think I should make myself a daily schedule and stick to it – like being in school

   Comment by Susanna — January 11, 2011 @ 5:39 am

3. 

   Taking an overlook at how I spend my time. That is great advise. I need to really look at it and use my timer more often to help me stay focused on the project at hand. =)

   Comment by MaDonna — January 11, 2011 @ 7:02 pm

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