Scatterbrained Writer and the Importance of Focus

One of the topics that has come up in my writer friend’s group is focus. Between the post of focus over at GirlTriesLife and Elisa’s post on Friday, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about whether or not focus is an issue for me.

Answer: yes, it is. I am a scatterbrained writer and I need more focus.

Source.

I hesitate to lock myself into one goal or another because I want to do all the things. All the time. And then I end up doing nothing. Deadlines pass by and I am left with nothing to show for it. I am very good at giving up after barely starting.

Anxiety has given me focus. I have to, like clockwork, have a blog post ready every Wednesday. Lately, I’ve been slacking and scraping by with a post on Tuesday night or Wednesday day of. I realize I need to fix this and I am starting to fix it.

But I’m not applying this focus to the fiction writing. My fiction writing has no set date, no time reserved for it to be done. I have no set publishing timeline because I am scared I won’t be able to meet those deadlines.

And my fear is causing me not to write much at all.

Not only is focus an issue, but being scattered in my writing spaces is an issue. My tables are cluttered with all the things I need to get done. Girltrieslife’s post on this really made me look at what my computer has open because I think I can multitask. For example, right now, I have:

Research links open for my space punk book.
My Habitica open with my to do list of all the things.
Facebook for chatting
Pinterest for inspiration–for drawing, not writing.
Stickies for random ideas.
A show to watch–with subtitles that I need to read to understand what’s going on.
Three word documents open with my current story planning scattered between all of them.

This week, my goal is going to be to clean up. I am going to tidy my to do lists, I’m going to get all the little things out of the way so that I can get out of my own way.

Will it work? I sure hope so. I’m leading into When Words Collide, the large writing conference here, where I am bound to return more more inspired to get my writing done. So we will see.

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