Seeking Time: Begin Again

I said recently that back during the fourteen years that I was writing about time regularly, "I was hungry for ways to get things done and sometimes even finding a few." 

One of my favorite fews is begin again.

Yes, Begin Again Comes from Meditation, Not Time Management

Begin Again is a concept from meditation. In Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics authors Dan Harris, Jeff Warren, and Carlyle Adler describe beginning again as the most important step in meditation. "The whole game is to notice when you're distracted, and begin again. And again. And again." Kelly McGonigal says In The Willpower Instinct that having to keep bringing your wandering mind back to your breath (beginning again) while meditating develops the brain. 

In my dabbling in meditation I have never seen begin again used as anything but a positive. 

That's Right. We've Done Nothing Wrong

I consider beginning again on a par with the writing advice to keep your butt-in-chair or write every day. The main difference is that beginning again doesn't involve guilt. Butt-in-chair and write every day carry with them a sense of othering. "Keeping your butt in a chair is what we writers do." "To be a writer, you have to write every day." 

But, remember, most of us are the kinds of writers who can't support ourselves with our writing. We've got a day job to keep us alive. For many of us, there are kids, sick relatives, moves to be made, newly diagnosed illness, depression over our lousy careers, existential dread...Those things are all going to happen and keep us, at least at times, from keeping those butts in chairs and writing every day. Kelly McGonigal has said (again In The Willpower Instinct) that self-criticism undermines motivation and self-control, leading us to give in, to give up. Feeling we are less than because we're being judged for not being able to live like writers are supposed to live is unlikely to be a positive for us.

Beginning again can be. We can get past those life issues or find a way to deal with them and then we can begin again.   

You Can Look Forward to Beginning Again

When we've done the begin again thing a few times, we find ourselves looking forward to it. Maybe it's because beginning again means whatever was standing in the way of our writing is over or we're managing it now. Maybe it's because we like sitting at our laptop in whatever passes as our workspace and know we'll enjoy getting back there again. Maybe it's because we're writers, and writers like nothing better than being able to begin writing again.

To paraphrase Dan Harris and company, "The whole game is to begin again. And again. And again." 

Time Management Tuesday: Time Management For Writers With No Time--You Don't Have To Do What Someone Else Is Doing

The second in an arc inspired by Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics by Dan Harris and Jeff Warren with Carlyle Adler.

Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics includes a chapter called I Can't Do This that deals to a great extent with what author Dan Harris and his colleagues say is the misunderstanding that meditation requires clearing the mind instead of beginning again. "You really can't hear this enough: Meditation does not require you to stop thinking," they say.

Many writers think they can't write because they can't do certain things, also. Specifically,

• Write every day
• Keep their butts in chairs

Write every day and butt-in-chair are writing cliches that have generated masses of text. They appear in articles, blog posts, books, and workshops. There may be TED Talks about them. In spite of that, I'm not sure what butt-in-chair means. Is it a "just do it" time management technique? Do people who feel they are butt-in-chair writers use some kind of time management techniques to make it possible for them to keep their butts in their chairs or do they have some kind of inner fortitude the rest of us don't that enables them to do what others can't? I'm mystified.

What I do feel write every day and butt-in-chair are, though, is exclusionary. Do this, not that. This is what you have to be able to do in order to do what I do.

You really can't hear this enough: Writing does not require you to do what other writers are doing.

Time Management Tuesday: Don't Write Just Anything Every Day

As my two or three rabid followers are aware, I'm not a major fan of the write-every-day rule. I find it unrealistic and, worse, exclusionary. "Only those of you who can write every day, as I do, can be writers." Writing every day is very helpful in terms of keeping you in a mindset for a big writing project, but there are other ways you can do that. I'm a goal person. Focusing on the goal of completing a writing project is a more important use of time to me than being able to say I write every day.

So you can see why I was interested when I stumbled upon, The Most Underrated Writing Tip That Beats "Write Every Day" and Improves Your Writing: Learn How to Write, Every Day by Boateng Sekyere when I was randomly reading on Medium recently. According to one of Sekyere's other articles, he joined Medium the middle of last year. He's published a lot of articles there since then, with various Medium publications. Meaning his work is being accepted by someone, he's not just self-publishing on the platform. His work is meeting some standard, and, if you look down at the claps and comments icons at the bottom of his articles, he's getting responses from readers. So while we're not talking a sage on a stage here, he does have a specific kind of writing experience.

And he makes, I believe, a very valid point.

Just What Are You Writing Every Day?

 

When he began writing, Sekyere cranked out a 1,000 word article every day for 18 days.  He actually had a very good experience when he submitted one of them, because an editor got back to him with feedback. When Sekyere spent some time researching the editor's comments, he discovered that many of them related to basic writing rules. But he hadn't learned them before he started writing. "All I cared about was writing every day, as I had learned from some experts."

 

Doing the same thing every day doesn't do you much good, if you don't know what you're doing or how to do it. If you're writing every day, but you're writing wrong, the act is going to have limited value for you. Yeah, maybe you'll create some kind of habit--the habit of writing wrong every day. Yeah, you might complete a variety of writing projects--projects you'll have trouble finding publishers for, because, well, you've been doing it wrong.

So What Should You Be Doing Instead Of Writing Every Day?

 

• Read, particularly in the genre you want to write.
• Study, through whatever classes and workshops you can find and afford. We're not talking an MFA here.
• Attend author talks, either in person or on-line.
• Find and join a writer's group. Read up on how to give and take feedback at writer's group. Then go to the meetings
• Try to work out your writing weaknesses and find books or articles that address them.

As Sekyere says, "Editors don't care that you write every day..." They want to see a good product. Learning how to create that is a better use of time than writing every day.

Time Management Tuesday: Some Alternatives To Writing Every Day

This past week someone on Twitter brought up the question of whether or not it is really necessary to write every day. His point was that not everyone has the time to do that.

Well, since he mentioned time...

How Writing Every Day Can Help 

Writing every day is extremely helpful if you are working on one particular project, because it helps you to stay in the world of your book. You can keep a little flow thing going.  It's even good in terms of time management, because you don't have to keep bringing yourself back up to speed with characters, setting, and whatever it is you're trying to do.

Writing every day can also help you avoid letting yourself--or those around you--develop a mindset that you only write when every other thing in your life has been done. It also helps you avoid accepting a lot of discretionary, volunteer tasks. You have to limit those because you write every day.

But Let's Get Real

A great many new writers, and even published writers who don't make a living writing:

•  Have day jobs that put food on the table, a roof over their heads, keep them alive.
• Are the main caregivers for children.
• Have day jobs and care for children.
• Are caring for family members in the extended family, often while holding down a day job. And dealing with children of one age or another
• Have chronic health problems of their own and also working day jobs and/or caring for others

Writing every day just isn't a possibility for many people. Suggesting they should be doing that not only does them no good, but can seem exclusionary. "Writers need to write every day. You can't write every day. Therefore...draw your own conclusion."

Can Writers Do Something Every Day?

You probably read. Read something every day that pertains to your writing.

• Read in your genre. Pay attention to what is being done by other writers. Pay attention to what you like and, more importantly, what you dislike.
• Read articles on craft. Pick up a copy of Writers' Digest, The Horn Book, or other publications that relate to the type of writing you do. Read what you can, when you can.
• If you write short form work, read publications that publish it. Learn who is publishing what.
• If you're working on a project that requires research, or even just thinking about starting one, do some reading for that.  

Maintain an "idea journal" in which you only have to jot down an idea or a situation, if that's all you have time to do. If you can find some kind of journal software, even better. You can search those and find similar ideas you've entered so you can pull them together when you want to do something with them.

Try to maintain a writing area, even it it's not an office or even a desk. When you have opportunities to write, write in the same place-- a particular chair in the living room where you work with a laptop or a notebook will do. Set aside a shelf for your writing books and magazines, any books you've been using for research.

Check out your schedule for the upcoming week (or weekend), looking for time when you can write. It's not necessary to have an eight-hour shift for writing. Small units or segments of time will due very nicely. 

What About Writing Every Day To Create A Writing Habit?

How many people have really done that?

My more rabid followers know that I'm a fan of psychologist Kelly McGonigal, who wrote The Willpower Instinct. She isn't a big supporter of promoting habits for changing behavior. Habit works best, she says, for small tasks that don't require a lot of people in the first place. Which is why so many of us have no problem brushing our teeth. Writing demands a lot more of us than keeping our teeth clean, though.

In my own experience, whenever I've felt I had a traditional write-every-day habit going, something jumped the border between my personal and professional lives and writing went out the window for a while. Habit just hasn't been that helpful for me when life problems strike.

Pursuing That There Goal--An Alternative To Writing Every Day

Kelly McGonigal talks about what she calls "automatic goal pursuit." For writers this would mean that instead of focusing on a behavior--I must write every day, because real writers write every day--you focus on an ultimate goal, say a particular writing project you want to complete. You chip away at that, however you can, instead of worrying about whether or not you're writing every day.

Producing something is the goal, not the process we use to produce it. Though there are plenty of articles, books, and workshops out there claiming to provide the secret to the perfect writing process, the real secret is that the perfect writing process doesn't exist.

I Have Some Experience With This, People

For instance, this week I have a seven-year-old house guest* arriving today and staying into Friday. I lost part of yesterday to guest prep. But I hate to lose a whole week, so I'm trying to plan some small tasks that will support some of this year's work goals.

• I got this blog post ready to post yesterday and scheduled a couple of tweet pitches on Tweetdeck for a Twitter pitch even on Thursday when I expect to be away from home most of the day. Submitting work is a goal.
• I've loaded my iPad with some essay and short story reading that will expose me to some new markets or some craft writing. Writing short form work is a goal.
• I'm slowly plugging away on a YA mystery this year, and I'm using a blueprinting system I learned at a workshop taught four years ago by Wendy Maas. I've printed out the blueprinting I've done so far so I can add to it at odd moments during the week.

Hmm. I'm definitely not trying to write every day. What I do appear to be doing, though, is pushing myself toward those goals.

Oh, my gosh, I love goals so.

*My house guest was struck down by a stomach bug last night, so we'll never know how well I would have done with the plan I'd made for his stay. However, I now have some found writing time. Instead of reinventing the wheel (something I always find time consuming), I'm going to stick with working toward goals, as I'd planned, maybe leaning a little more heavily on the blueprinting then I would have if he'd been here.