Finding Focus

 by Linda Rodriguez

All my life, I have been able to focus, intensely and ferociously, on anything to which I turn to my attention. At times, this has even been a problem. It's become a joke in my family that, if I am engrossed in reading, studying, writing, or just seriously thinking about some issue or problem, it will be almost impossible to gain my attention. When they were adolescents, my kids used to get a kick out of trying all kinds of elaborate performances to try to break my focus and gain my attention while the others watched. There were even small bets laid. No one ever won, not without pretending some kind of serious injury or other emergency.

This kind of fierce focus has been good to me through the years. It allowed me to graduate with two degrees cum laude while working multiple jobs and freelance contracts and raising kids as a single mom. It allowed me to meet an incredible deadline for a book imposed on me by my publishing house because of their own difficulties. I was able to write, completely revise, and have accepted (with few edits) an entire novel in less than 3 months. It allowed me to write another book while struggling through breast cancer with surgeries and all of its other invasive and weakening treatments and side effects. It has been one of my great personal strengths in life, and I have relied on it as long as I have lived.

Now, after being out of this process of writing a novel for a long time, because of spiraling health problems and a heavy load of freelance work I've had to do to keep afloat with all the medical bills, it's hard to get back into thinking in the fictional creative mode, which always relies on intense focus. Writing novels involves focusing so intensely on the characters, the setting, the characters' actions and the way they impact each other, and a million other things that you are immersed completely into that fictional world that you have created.

Sometimes, coming out of that world after a good stint of writing and facing the mundane, everyday world in which we live can be difficult and require very real time for adjustment. Sometimes, it's hard to cut off that focus and to turn off that imaginary world, so that you can act reasonably in this everyday world. This is one of the reasons that writers sometimes drank so much. They used alcohol to shut down their imaginative world and ease their way back into the world of their families and obligations.

Once lost, that habit of intense focus is hard to regain. It has always been such a part of my innate personality that I have never had to think about it or cultivate it. It was always just there when I reached out to access it, like one of my senses. To lose it like this does feel as if I have lost one of my innate senses, such as vision or hearing. It leaves me feeling that disoriented and dislocated from the world around me. I am, in a certain way, a broken person with this part of myself missing.

Consequently, I am really having problems working on my current novel right now. Between debilitating coughing spasms and my usual conglomeration of pain, I'm not getting sleep at night. This means that, during the day, I am moving as if through molasses, and that includes my mind, which seems to me to be full of sludge that keeps it from fully functioning. I am still having the health problems and still piled high with paying jobs, because, of course, we're still up to our necks in debt, thanks to medical bills. If anything, it's worse now, because my husband has been laid off from his long-time university job at an age where no one in this capitalist society wants to hire you. Still, it's time to get back to my own writing. I don't feel that I can avoid that any longer, just because it's painful to face that I no longer have what was once one of my great strengths.

I am aware that many of my fellow writers were not gifted, seemingly from birth, with this kind of deep focus, but have had to work hard to develop it through their own efforts. Consequently, I know it can be done and that whining about it is about as attractive as someone born wealthy complaining about the loss of their money. Now, I am trying to piece together how to develop what I was born with and never had to work for, and I'm not finding it easy, at all. Wish me luck.

How have you been able to develop the intense focus required for immersion in writing the novel? Have you developed any handy techniques or shortcuts? Inquiring minds want to know.

Linda Rodriguez's 12th book is The Fish That Got Away: The Sixth Guppy Anthology. Her 11th book was Fishy Business: The Fifth Guppy Anthology (edited). Dark Sister: Poems was her 10th book and a finalist for the Oklahoma Book Award. Plotting the Character-Driven Novel, based on her popular workshop, and The World Is One Place: Native American Poets Visit the Middle East, an anthology she co-edited, were published in 2017.  Every Family Doubt, her fourth mystery featuring Cherokee detective, Skeet Bannion, and Revising the Character-Driven Novel will be published in 2021. Her three earlier Skeet novels—Every Hidden Fear, Every Broken Trust, Every Last Secret—and earlier books of poetry—Skin Hunger and Heart's Migration—have received critical recognition and awards, such as St. Martin's Press/Malice Domestic Best First Novel, International Latino Book Award, Latina Book Club Best Book of 2014, Midwest Voices & Visions, Elvira Cordero Cisneros Award, Thorpe Menn Award, and Ragdale and Macondo fellowships. Her short story, “The Good Neighbor,” published in Kansas City Noir, has been optioned for film. 

Rodriguez is past chair of the AWP Indigenous Writer’s Caucus, past president of Border Crimes chapter of Sisters in Crime, founding board member of Latino Writers Collective and The Writers Place, and a member of International Thriller Writers, Native Writers Circle of the Americas, Wordcraft Circle of Native American Writers and Storytellers, and Kansas City Cherokee Community. Learn more about her at http://lindarodriguezwrites.blogspot.com 

Resistance

by Linda Rodriguez

You’ve started your story or novel, and you have a few good pages that you’re pleased with. You have to go out of town or deal with some kind of emergency for a few days, weeks, or months, but you know where you’re going with your writing project, and you can’t wait until you get back to the story you’re working on. When you do return, you set up time to write and do everything you can to be prepared and in perfect shape to work. The morning/afternoon/evening to get started again happens and bang! You run smack into some invisible force that refuses to let you write those pages that you want and need to write.

This is resistance, and it’s the common companion of the writer. This is when your own brain turns into a toddler having a tantrum and shouting, “No!” Resistance is the enemy, an internal saboteur, fifth column located inside your head. You may find yourself checking email or Facebook or Twitter, going online to do some research that suddenly seems imperative and falling down the Google rabbit hole. You might find yourself organizing your desk or your files or doing a load or three of laundry. You may find yourself cleaning out closets or suddenly running errands that you’ve been putting off for days or weeks, which have suddenly become imperative. Anything, anything at all, but write what you’ve set yourself to write.

As someone who writes for a living, I’ve a long, close acquaintanceship with my own resistance. Often, I believe I have it under control. Then, it shows up in some new form to bedevil me. Too many times, it can be quite persuasive. It is true that any project, especially a big one, will be easier to accomplish in an organized space. It’s true that some research needs to be done before you put words to paper. And frequently clearing the decks before you work can leave your mind readier to sink into your created world. It whispers perfectly plausible excuses to me that will end up keeping me from writing or from writing as much or as well as I want and intend to write.

One of the ways I’ve found to subdue my resistance is to always have another ongoing project. This takes advantage of one of resistance’s own techniques to throw it against itself as judo and other martial arts do.

This does not mean, “Start another book.” All those million new book ideas that resistance sends trying to seduce you from your project should just be written down in an idea notebook or document and promptly forgotten until the book is over and it’s time to look for new concepts. No, I’m talking about another project that you’ve decided ahead of time you want to work on in addition to the main project rather than instead of the main project.

I offer myself the reward of working on this secondary story when I’ve met my goal on the main project. If it’s a very bad day and resistance is winning, I might allow myself to work on the other project first for a limited time to get my writing muscles moving. I set a timer, though, and when it rings, I must move onto the main book. Often, I may be doing something that’s more fun on the secondary project, such as research or exploratory planning and note making. This makes it an ideal reward.

The nice thing about using a secondary project in this way is that, often by the time I’ve finished my main project, my secondary project is well underway and becomes my new main project while I set up a new secondary project to help me deflect the power resistance wields over me. Stephen King once said, “A change is as good as a rest,” and I think he was right. Also, this technique weakens the power of resistance by making it believe that I am giving way to it, at least somewhat. Yet, it keeps me productive.

What do you do when you encounter resistance? Have you found successful ways to defeat it?

Linda Rodriguez's Plotting the Character-Driven Novel, based on her popular workshop, and The World Is One Place: Native American Poets Visit the Middle East, an anthology she co-edited, are her newest books. Dark Sister: Poems will be published in May, 2018. Every Family Doubt, her fourth mystery novel featuring Cherokee campus police chief, Skeet Bannion, will appear in August, 2018, and Revising the Character-Driven Novel will be published in November, 2018. Her three earlier Skeet novels—Every Hidden Fear, Every Broken Trust, and Every Last Secret—and her books of poetry—Skin Hunger and Heart's Migration—have received critical recognition and awards, such as St. Martin's Press/Malice Domestic Best First Novel, International Latino Book Award, Latina Book Club Best Book of 2014, Midwest Voices & Visions, Elvira Cordero Cisneros Award, Thorpe Menn Award, and Ragdale and Macondo fellowships. Her short story, “The Good Neighbor,” published in the anthology, Kansas City Noir, has been optioned for film.

Rodriguez is past chair of the AWP Indigenous Writer’s Caucus, past president of Border Crimes chapter of Sisters in Crime, founding board member of Latino Writers Collective and The Writers Place, and a member of International Thriller Writers, Wordcraft Circle of Native American Writers and Storytellers, and Kansas City Cherokee Community. Visit her at http://lindarodriguezwrites.blogspot.com

Writing Avoidance Anonymous

by Shari Randall

I know, I know, Stephen King says be a professional.

Plumbers don’t get plumbing block.

I was going to write about social media for writers but I got exhausted just thinking about it.

I considered my favorite writers’ rules for inspiration. Here’s a good one from the aforementioned writing guru: “If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write.” I’m dying to take Stephen’s advice and dive into Louise Penny’s latest.

But I put the Kindle down.

Usually when I want to avoid writing, I do housework.  Some people exercise (bless their hearts). Some cook, some paint. But for undeniably necessary excuses, you can’t beat housework. I mean, look at those dust bunnies! That laundry isn’t going to fold itself. I have to pack for Bouchercon! Better plant those bulbs. My poor husband will starve unless I go to the Stop and Shop right now!

Why does this happen? Why do I want to avoid writing? I love writing. Or, more honestly, I’m in the Dorothy Parker camp: I hate writing. I love having written. Plus I have a deadline. Actually, I have more than one deadline: One for Book Three in my Lobster Shack mystery series and one for a short story anthology I’d love to be in. Being in an anthology is a kick. Writing is such a solitary activity, while being in an anthology, seeing what other writers come up with for the theme, that’s actual writing fun.

But I have to rake the leaves…. and do research....

My Googling – okay I’ll be honest – writing avoidance led me to an article on writer's block in The New Yorker by Maria Konnikova. You can read it here.

Turns out that some researchers believe writer's block exists and for some people, stress can trigger it (see aforementioned social media for writers). The article was reassuring and reading it, I wasted a total of ten minutes I could have been writing. Research, right? (Writing Avoidance 101) The researchers also believe writer's block can be beat. I’m simplifying a complicated article, but there was an effective remedy: professionals gave the blocked writers “exercises in directed mental imagery” - essentially writing prompts.

This led to an epiphany. Sometimes that’s what I need – a prompt to write to.

I gave a cold shoulder to the clean but unfolded laundry and pulled out my laptop. My writing prompt? How to beat writer's block.

Sorry, honey, takeout again tonight. The laundry will have to fold itself. It’s time to write.

How do you beat writer's block?