Time Management Tuesday: Go Ahead And Shift Your Focus. You Can Do That. Also, I Wrote Some Introverted Humor.

 You Are an Introverted Parent was published last week at Frazzled. The piece was selected for  Medium's boosted program, which means I got additional marketing there and reached a higher audience. I am happy with the results in readership.

You Are an Introverted Parent is my seventh published piece of writing this year, equaling last year's publications and one less than the year before. I've published 35 pieces of various types of writing on Medium since I got with the program. That was about 4 years ago. Does 35 published pieces of work in 4 years seem like a lot to you? It seems like a lot to me. I'm afraid it seems like a great deal to my Facebook friends who have to endure all my announcements there whenever I publish something new.

How Much Time Does It Take To Write These Things, Anyway?

Here's the thing. A woman who started writing at Medium in January of this year sometimes publishes 20 articles a month there at various publications. Additionally, she started her own publication. She sometimes publishes several times a week or even more than once a day. Yes, when you're writing at that kind of speed, quality is going to be very up and down. I don't read everything she writes.

Nonetheless, from things I've read at Medium, the way to collect  followers--people who are Medium members and are interested in your work--is to publish as she is publishing, by which I mean a lot. She's not the only writer there who publishes several times a week and more. The writer I'm talking about has gathered 2.7 thousand followers in eight months. I've gathered 470 in four years. 

Almost every time I've published something on Medium, I've attracted a few new followers. When I get boosted, I attract more than a few. So, yes, publishing is how you build readership there. If you're thinking in terms of time management in that particular situation, you need to manage your time so you can do that.

Shift Your Focus To Short Form Work, Gail

Now, over the last four years I was working on a book, so that took a lot of time that I wasn't using for other kinds of writing. I've also wasted a lot of time querying agents about my book-length work. Both those things are over for now, and I will be focusing my time specifically on short-form work. So, yes, I will be writing more of it. That's what time management will be about for me for the immediate future.

Not short-form work just for Medium, though. I have two short stories out for consideration at other places right now. I'm working on something I'm going to submit elsewhere, too. I'm not a rapid writer, anyway. I came up with the idea for You Are an Introverted Parent, came up with an angle/voice for it, wrote it, and submitted it in just under a week. That is the speed of light for me. Between that more methodical, orderly, and obsessed with detail mindset (someone else said that about me) and submitting some work to other places, I'm never going to be publishing even weekly at Medium, forget about doing any more than that.

Writing differently than other people who publish there is no reason not to publish there, too.

Shifting Your Writing Focus Is Still Using Your Time For Writing

I frequently...by which I mean often...see people posting on Xitter in absolute despair because they can't find an agent or publisher for their book-length manuscript. They are considering quitting writing, because at this point in time they can't publish one particular type of writing. It's as if they don't even consider any other kind of writing. The book is all. The book is the dream, and if they can't achieve their dream, they're done.

They don't think about shifting their focus.

Time Management Tuesday: Focusing On An Achievable Goal

Okay, folks, National Novel Writing Month starts tomorrow. I don't have all my chapters blueprinted, but, in better news, all that NaNoWriMo cooking I told you about a couple of days ago survived a thirteen-hour power outage Sunday night through mid-Monday afternoon.

I am not officially doing NaNoWriMo. I didn't sign up. In part this is because I'm working on a novel I've already started back in 2004 or 5 when I officially did NaNo. On top of that, I started a revision earlier this year. So, no, I'm not actually following the rules for NaNo 2017. Also, I have no hope of finishing this puppy this month. I'm not even going to sit down with the calendar and work out how few full writing days I've got in November.

The stash I found yesterday

Finally, while I've done the best job I've ever done of prepping a project before starting, I'm vague on the final chapters, which isn't promising for finishing. And I've been working on that right down to the wire. Yesterday, during that extended power outage I was talking about, which meant no computer access, I worked on cleaning my desk, because I'm serious about working next month. Gotta work at that desk instead of the kitchen counter or a couch. What did I find on the top of a filing cabinet but a stack of materials/ideas I'd been collecting on this project since around 2004, that last NaNo attempt? Going through it was helpful, though finding it says volumes about my organizational and cleaning skills, doesn't it?

Nonetheless, finishing a book in a month is not my goal this year. It's not how I expect to use my time.

So How Are You Going To Use Your Time, Gail? 

Well, I'm going to shoot for:

• Two-thirds of a book.
• A plan for the last third of the book.
• A month of focus training. 

Focus Training Or All NaNo, All The Time

My plan is to spend all my writing time writing the NaNo project. Learn to focus by focusing. I have one NESCBWI event to prepare for, but otherwise I'm not using any writing time for:

• Submissions.
• Blogging, except for National Novel Writing updates and news and the December CCLC. I'm hoping to use some of that blogging time for "the project." Whatever little bit I can do then will be a way of training myself to work more frequently, say...every day?
• Prepping material for writers' group. In fact, I just this minute decided not to go!

Prepping today--still not at my desk

So I've got a two-fer going starting tomorrow. I'm generating material and developing monk-like intensity.

Time Management Tuesday: Focus Training

Okay, I'm concentrating. Right now. Right this minute.

Back in July, I promised I would spend some time focusing on focusing. I'm interested in developing such powerful self-discipline that (still concentrating) I can work no matter what my surroundings.

Well, I'm not a fool. I know it's not likely that that's going to happen in my lifetime. Maybe in my next one, if I keep plugging away at this. Fortunately, I've found some focus training methods that might prep me for that future time.

Train Your Brain for Monk-like Focus at lifehacker has a lot of fascinating material. Being easily distracted, for instance, was a good thing in days of old, really old. People who could be distracted by threats such as wild animals or marauders from another village got their genes into the gene pool, while those with the self-control to concentrate on their cave paintings did not. But I, myself, am still concentrating, so I'm going to focus on three training suggestions described
in the article.

Amp Up Your To-do List

Pick the most important item on your to-do list (because you have one, and it's an external support for your willpower) and give it a deadline. This might seem obvious for writers, who are always working with deadlines, right? Not necessarily. Many of us spend a lot of time working "on spec." We're writing things we hope to find a publisher for. In which case, we'll need to create deadlines for ourselves. A rough draft may need to be finished before something coming up for the family or before vacation is over or vacation starts. But a deadline/due-date of any kind increases the importance of the work we're doing, improving our need to stay on task.

And when we meet our deadlines, we can give ourselves a reward.

Use Entertainment as a Training Program

Focusing on something productive triggers the same parts of the brain as focusing on entertainment. According to Susan K. Perry (who wrote Writing in Flow, by the way), there isn't any objective difference between one kind of absorption and another. So, theoretically, you "can be reading actively, watching a movie actively, or creating something or working toward a work goal actively" and it should help improve your focus. It needs to be challenging, though. And you need to do it actively. Which means TV won't work for me because I blog, read, and sew while I'm watching it. As it turns out, advertisements during TV programs break focus, anyway. You'd have to stick to watching programming that's streamed or collected on DVDs without commercials.

I can think of lots of ways to tinker with this idea.

The Ever Popular Meditation

I've already written on this subject a number of times, so let's just refresh our minds with Gail has learned about meditation.

Adventures In Meditating

Finding Time For Meditation

"Killing The Buddha" Or Protecting Method And Process

Developing Some Discipline

Week Two Of Developing Discipline With Meditation

Week Three Of Developing Discipline With Meditation

The Fourth And Final Week Of Developing Discipline With Meditation

Wow. Look at all the writing I've done on meditation. I should really be a whole lot better at it than I am.

Does Learning To Focus Mean You Can Give Up Getting Your House In Order?

Not an orderly environment.

No, I am not giving up on creating an orderly environment. But experience has taught me I'm not great at maintaining one. And when maintenance is down, it would be nice if I had some really powerful focus, or any focus at all, to carry me over.

Time Management Tuesday: Working In Chaos

As a general rule, I find that material disorder--the kind where your stuff piles up around you, the kind where you lose your cell phone under some unopened mail on the kitchen counter, the kind where you find clothes you'd forgotten you had in the ironing or maybe that's the mending--saps my chi. It distracts me. As I've said before, "I do not deal well with mental and physical disruptions and confusion." I never suggest that homemaking has little value and that writers or anyone else can just laugh it off in order to make time for art. That kind of thinking is sure to come back to take a big old chunk out of your butt. Really. Somebody did a study that showed that very thing.

However...


...I've been working in the bedroom for a month or two now, because my desk in the office is a mess, and who has time to deal with that? A couple of weeks ago, I had twenty or thirty minutes to work. That was it for the day. Probably that was it for the next couple of days. A couple of hours earlier, I had stripped my bed. Disorder! When I used to have a yoga sanctuary in that room, I couldn't roll out my mat if the bed wasn't made. Work? Ha!

But, remember, I had no more than 30 minutes to work. How much of it did I want to spend looking for sheets and making up a bed with them. Wouldn't I be better off, I thought, if I had such incredible concentration that I could work no matter what kind of surroundings I found myself in?

Well, you might describe my concentration as "incredible"depending on how you define the word. I can assure you that we're not talking the kind of incredible that allows you to get much done unless the stars are lined up just right. Nonetheless, I sat down at my desk, with my back to the bed, and worked.

Improving Concentration

I've been interested in improving my concentration for a long time. Self-discipline. Impulse control. Fortunately, I'm the kind of person who enjoys the journey, because I'm sure not getting to the destination.

But this summer is different. It's one thing to let your mind wander where it will when you have three or four hours a day to work. It's another when you have three or four hours a week, if you're lucky. I'm feeling a little more motivated to get some kind of power brain thing going.

So next week, and maybe the week after, I'll be focusing on focusing.