Tag: writingadvice

Essentialism and real life

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How I am working on my novel the Essentialism way

A few weeks ago I took Greg McKeown’s course on Simple Productivity: How to accomplish more with less on Skillshare all about Essentialism and Productivity. I was already aware of the book from the excellent and always funny “Go Help Yourself” podcast which I would really recommend if you can’t always be bothered to read the book but want the ideas! Your main goal of the course is to identify the thing in your life are you not making an “essential” For me that is working on my novel. Once you have identified this, then you will need to think what makes it so essential for you. I took time to review the book I have written and – though it’s a right mess – I still believe in the story I am trying to tell.

Greg McKeown Essentialism:The Disciplined Pursuit of Less

After this philosphising about your purpose, you have to get down to practicalities. As you know I am always looking for ways to be more productive as I recently shared my reading list. Then you have to create strong boundaries around this essential thing. And finally you have to “routinize” the work so it actually happens. All of this is easier said than done!

I chose writing as my thing I don’t do enough of, you may have guessed that aside from faithfully writing morning pages, there are days the pen doesn’t hit the page. That has to change but in addition to McKeown’s advice I needed to consider my pacing approach. I am lucky enough to have help from a Fatigue Coach, Pamela Rose and she very wisely suggests you build up slowly within your tolerance and live carefully once you have established a baseline of energy. Her approach actually makes sense for lots of us, not just people with a fatigue condition. What I am suggesting is you shouldn’t rush straight into saying I’ll write an hour a day or a 1500 words a day or whatever other rule you have read somewhere. You can build up to this if that works for your life.

Looking at my current capability I have made a plan to build up over the next few months. I am still struggling with screens as they are more tiring for me with my foggy brain so instead I have been writing by hand. For the last few weeks I have been attempting to write two days a week for thirty minutes then having a type up day each Sunday. This practical focus has been achievable and the idea is to keep building on the momentum of the regular writing. I am going to attempt to lengthen one session this week before I add another day in. This way I have stayed building on my progress but not gone too far.

I think with all good self-help books we have to take the best parts. The advice can start to diffuse into our lives so that we establish any changes within our own capabilities. I think it is important to make our creativity an essential, to recognise artistic expression is more than just a hobby. But also to make realistic demands on our self. As ever real life can get in the way.

Productivity Hacks and Where to Find Them

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The search continues for productivity hacks for busy-brained people who have too much to do…

If you have always had a busy brain like me, distractable and often day-dreamy, you will probably have spent years looking for systems that help you “get things done” or “be more productive”. You probably have to work twice as hard to put the any suggestions in place – I can tell you with the added bonus of brain fog for the last 18 months, I have hard-won experience about just how tough this can be. Over the years, I have developed an insatiable appetite for the self-help books that help and here are the productivity hacks that have actually helped:

Steven Covey, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People

This book is such a a classic though I haven’t read it since I was an impressionable teenager some of the habits have stuck. It’s definitely quite a dense management-speak book that couldn’t solve all my problems but there is one hack that has stuck – the importance matrix. You probably know to always write a to do list: mine has too many things on it and some on there that “should have dones” that haunt me every time I look at this.

But I am having a tough time, I sit and make a matrix. In essence what Covey teaches you to do is to rank the most important and time-consuming tasks so that you get your priorities done first. When my brain is fuzzed with too many tasks to do, I still use this method after all these years to focus in on what’s got to get done first.

Graham Allcott: How to Be a Productivity Ninja

One book I think that runs alongside Covey’s book which helps you prioritise tasks is The Productivity Ninja. The section that stayed with me was both about knowing your best times of day but most importantly protect your attention. This means working in focus mode on my phone or putting a timer on to work solidly for that time. Now as you will know getting precious time alone with enough energy is my constant battle, but knowing that mornings are the times I can concentrate best and that I work well with instrumental music on helps me keep on task.

Greg McKeown, Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less

Essentialism was a book I have found quite recently. It actually seems more of a philosophy – a minimalism for your inner life and I enjoyed this introductory course on Skillshare (link not affiliated). Having thought through a lot of advice, it seems like he is asking you to design your life and I will share more on the project I am working on as part of the course in a future post. The general idea is to really identify not just your priorities but areas of your lives where you can improve so you are always moving in the direction. As part of this work, you really have to identify your boundaries and so that you really are focusing on what is essential.

Manoush Zomodori: Bored and Brilliant: How Time Spent Doing Nothing Changes Everything

I have written my account of trying a bored and brilliant project before. The ideas that have really stuck is taking breaks from our phone. She forces you to go on your commute without your phone or go for a quiet walk. What a revelation that we can cope without the modern crutch. The most difficult part is you might feel weird being the only one looking around, not down at your phone. As well as giving you a break, it allows your restless brain to work and often ideas will form. It may seem the opposite of being productive to let your mind wander, but our problem solving mechanism works hard for us and although I do still often have the crutch of my phone, I am much more aware of taking time without it.

Nir Eyal, Indistractable: How to Control your Attention and Choose your Life

The final book I have found helpful has some startling evidence to share about the impact of social media and the instant access of information on our attention. The message I take from this book, apart from making me horrified about my screen time, is that we need to be aware when we are trying to escape.

Most people don’t want to acknowledge the uncomfortable truth that distraction is always an unhealthy escape from reality

Nir Eyal, Indistractable

For me I acknowledge I need these breaks, often into fiction or even writing itself. The hard disciplined work of being indistractable is not easy but will undoubtedly improve your productivity.

The fatigue recovery that I have had to undertake has taught me a lot about just how much energy focusing and using our brain takes. I am not yet at my full capacity but so much improved now I can see how important it is to be aware of how we spend our attention. As well as using these hacks, I would say we also need to balance. We need these hard and focused moments to work effectively in the time we have but also those things that give us a break.

Have you read any productivity books you think will help?

Coping with Creative Blocks

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Life can be full of difficulties that block creativity but we have to keep going forwards.

Today we are saying goodbye to a friend who lost her life too young. Like most people nearing forty a number of friends have been lost along the way, and some dear relatives. It always take you by surprise.

Sadly, so many people have lost their lives with the pandemic too and we are all more vulnerable than we like to think. I am grateful today we can say a proper goodbye, many were not able to with the restrictions and lockdowns that made it more difficult to honour those passed over the last few years.

When death hits closer to home, it turns us inwards and outwards at the same time. We say I’m going to do the things they could not do. This vivacious woman could not go everywhere so let me go there. It also helps us reflect on where we are stuck.

I do feel stuck in my art and in trying to do so much for my family. I feel stuck inside my house because I am not well (though thankfully much better than I was). And this inward reflection shows up in frustration and criticism of any work I have done. It shows up in how I wrangle through the bureaucracy of school, how everything feels like a fight.

My morning journalling practice has been so valuable, despite writing only a few scenes in my novel, I have filled a large notebook with all my thoughts and feelings in the last few months. So perhaps, a bit like this rambling post, my mind can only cope with the fragmented thoughts and processing my feelings.

I think when you are stuck, blocked by life, there are some amazing tools out there, like The Artist’s Way but there is also something that you have to use too: faith that it will come again. If life is too big for the creative work you have to trust that the way you are living your life will help you show up soon to your art.

In the meantime, I have been taking my Artist’s Dates in exploring nearby, as well as using my flowerpress I have been elderflower picking and made tea and cordial for the first time. I am being creative in the kitchen – partly to help make the food stretch further as prices rise. And I am gradually finding ways through to my son to help him in this tricky time. I have to believe that treating life with this curiosity will gradually let my creativity unfurl.

The last of the elderflower harvest

So, as I prepare myself to go to the service for my friend, I think about what I can promise her. In the future, if not now, I will try to live my life to the full. I will do what I can each day to step towards my dreams of writing for a living. I will do everything I can to cherish the bright spirit she was.

Difficult times are not easy but death so young makes us reflect sharply – if not now, then when?

The Deadline of Forty

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How I live without regret (most of the time)

I saw a post today on another writer’s instagram to the John Lennon quote “Life is what happens when we are busy making other plans”. She felt filled with regrets for time lost, when she wasn’t creating. As my child grows up, I get older I feel this existential dread often and hauntingly. Life is what happens when we are busy planning other novels and dreaming of our name in the book shop.

Life is what happens when we are busy making other plans

John Lennon

But also no regrets. We come now to the work, enriched by these full and busy challenging lives. Life is also what we make of it and our ability to reflect on the life that actually happened. I remember working alongside a number of students, listening to how they were planning their futures and laughing, not unkindly. Not a single day I have ever planned has gone exactly as I thought and yet in youth I was obsessed with the idea that I ought to know what was next. That is not to dismiss goals or even dreams but just to assert that they’re also to be expected to go off course. Constantly.

It is both niave and beautiful to believe in plans. To believe that there are not a million fracturing moments in each day that shifts and restructures the life that happens. But enough of the philosophy. How I see it is that for me my books, just as my life, are constantly being derailed. The life train hops track quite often and the final destination is nowhere expected. Maybe I wouldn’t feel this so accutely if I had reached the infamy of a Beatle but given the Beatle we are talking of, we can assume no-one can predict the ending. No-one protests peacefully for a living expects this violent end. No-one who grew from working class roots assumes they’ll one day offer and reject a Knighthood.

But life is also in the small things. One of the quotes that I come back to for my writing is “Don’t tell me the moon is shining, show me the glint of light on broken glass.” Chekov is interested in how we experience life, the mundane details of things are so much more evocative of true experience as well as of course avoiding exposition in our writing. If you don’t believe the the unplanned, novel will ever happen well you might be right. But you just try and write a character exactly as you intended and like any other person, you will find they have their own ideas and take you a different way.

As I tackle the final the furlough towards forty, I am inevitably reevaluating what I have achieved. But over the years much has happened to redefine success. At some point I may have thought it was a certain job or certain financial position. At other times I have of course wished to be published. And this year, as I recover from fatigue, I reframed it to mean working hard on looking after myself. How we define ourselves is often the work of an artist . From our unique perspective, we can also reflect on everything around ourselves. But not plan nor regret what has gone off course. Because the song John Lennon is singing is really a lullaby to soothe us. We do not have control of life. And it’s easier to learn that as soon as possible.

Make Progress, not Perfection

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As I round up the month, I consider the need to keep moving forward

There is a special sort of acceptance that comes with being a slow writer. Whilst productivity hackers will tell me I do have time to write, I will always say do just a little. But as I round up this month’s work, I have to contend with the reality of feelings of failure that I haven’t got that far. As I wrote this time last month I am developing an idea around how the antagonist meets and becomes closer to my protagonist. I have written a further scene with this in mind. But mainly I took myself to a cafe to do some thinking (drank coffee.)

I don’t think anyone noticed I was trying to take a selfie of my thinking!

I do think there is a place for driving your ambition, so it is hard not to beat myself up when I have wasted that quiet time I had drinking coffee and not writing. But I also need lots of quiet time and breaks to manage my life with chronic illness and as a SEND parent. But then again I shouldn’t even provide these excuses. Brene Brown explains that our perfectionism is a way of avoiding judgement and shame. So when I feel this sense of shame for not working harder, I have to remind my inner perfectionist I am making progress.

So with that confession out the way, I will go forward with a better mindset that says make progress, not perfection. Some things I did achieve: I started to share my writing prompts on the MumWriteNow instagram and managed a thirty-minute sprint. The hashtag is writerightnow if you want to join this Saturday. I also started publishing a fortnightly newsletter for the charity I volunteer for. So this month has included some writing even if it is not the perfect progress I would have liked.

And I do believe that without realising perfectionism was holding me back, this, I would have never put pen to paper. Perfectionism tells you: you left it too late, you can’t write that, you’re not unique, no-one wants to read this. I have always felt inadequate in my writing skills but secretly I wanted to write. Over the last ten years I have worked on ideas and progressed to the point where I do not feel worried or ashamed to saying I am working on a work-in-progress. Including myself