Velveteen Mind

Focus is not a Fad

The number of times I've written about focus on this blog is telling. Every now and then I show up and say, "Eureka! I've solved my problem of focus! Watch out! Here I come!"

And then I get distracted.

What you see are the bursts of energy in the foreground. My excitement at a breakthrough, usually immediately followed by the realization that I overshot.

But in the background, I am consistently making permanent habit changes. Regardless of how "Productivity for the win!" I get, it is the simple, deep seated changes that propel me forward. Even if merely by inches at a time.

Habits like compartmentalizing my time online. As Amy Whitley referred to my approach, "firewalls of the mental sort."

Boundaries.

I recently chatted up the women at the new Power Down podcast on just this topic.

Heather King of The Extraordinary Ordinary and Amy Whitley of Never-True Tales invited me to join them as their first guest to discuss the value of unplugging and, as was my focus for our discussion, how to create and maintain boundaries between our professional and personal lives. 

In advance of my BlissDom writing workshop in Dallas this March (more on that next week), they were particularly interested in how I handle boundaries within my work. It's one thing to know to unplug and focus on your family (the ongoing subject of their podcast series), but it's a different challenge to compartmentalize your attention while you are working online.

Focus.

As I write this, it is a struggle not to open my Gmail in another tab. The Pinterest button in my bookmark bar keeps calling to me every time I move to look up a link.

That is precisely what we talked about: Tips to help you maintain focus during your writing process and while you are connected online, as well as how to protect your time offline.

I realize that taking a break from social media is a bit of a fad right now. When I first proposed the idea for my BlissDom session, I had seen very few people warm to the idea of a more regimented compartmentalization of our time spent online. Now? Apparently it's a thing.

My friend Ciaran Blumenfeld of Momfluential wrote about #FacebookBreak yesterday. I hadn't heard of it but the fact that there's a hashtag makes me want to take a nap.

People are realizing the need to take breaks from the constant intake of social media for a variety of reasons, but I strongly suggest that you take a longer term view.

That BlissDom session? The title is Uninterrupted Thought: How to Wield the Power of Focus. It won't be about how to take a break and brand it to your topical advantage. It won't be about being cool and on top of trends. 

It will be about flourishing.

I still want "furious furious beautiful enthralling art. With no commas."

Boundaries beget focus. 

Download the Power Down podcast (I am in episode 002) and then let me know what you think. For the moment, you can visit the SITS Girls Power Down page and listen to my episode right there on the site. (That will change with the next episode, though.)

Not sure how to download or subscribe to podcasts? Amy wrote an excellent post about What is a Podcast? How Do You Tune In? that walks you right through the easy process.

I had a ball talking with the hosts and am excited to follow along through their next episodes.

Episode 3 will feature Ann Imig! I fell a lot in love with Ann a few years ago at Creative Alliance in Ojai, California. It was my first time meeting her and I... can't even finish this sentence. I adore her. I wish fewer people adored her, though, because I need her attention to be less divided.

Ahem. Power down and look at me. I'm a kid trying to get his mom's attention.

It's a good podcast series. We need to talk about the effects of our attention being so divided all the time in a realistic way. I'm looking forward to Ann's episode and hope you find your thoughts provoked while listening to mine.

Thank you again, Amy and Heather and SITS Girls, for letting me thrash around a bit in your airwaves.

What are your tips for powering down? Thoughts after listening to the podcast?

 

Be sure to subscribe to my "Infrequent but lovely" newsletter while you are here, as newsletter subscribers received exclusive content in this post: 10 Practical Tips for Powering Down

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A Trumpet. A Signal.

For the last few nights, I've closed my social media day by posting a video from The Killers on Facebook and Pinterest. Often after pinning a handful of images of Brandon Flowers, their mesmerizing lead singer.

Every girl should have a dream boy she can can gaze after. Not the kind that does your dishes or changes your shared offspring's diapers. No. The kind you'll never meet and really don't even want to know that much about. The daydream kind. The distraction kind. 

He doesn't even have to be cute. Maybe he's dirty and intimidating. Rick from The Walking Dead would do nicely.

Maybe he's dangerous and impossible. Breaking Bad fans seem to get lost in that world. I've never seen Mad Men, but I know who Don Draper is. I do have the Internet and there are women on there that like to lose their minds over that man. (ps, good grief, AMC. all the links I needed were on the same site. good for you.)

I'm simultaneously decades and a single breath away from the girl who consumed Tiger Beat and Bop. 

• • •

I've been working harder the last few weeks, spending more time hunkered down in front of my computer, and these evening gestures with The Killers close my day nicely. Powerfully. Firmly.

A trumpet. A signal.

So far, no one has Liked or repinned any of those videos. Or not many. That's fine. I turn up the sound and get lost in the lyrics. For years, I have wandered into The Killers and given up so completely that I feel something shudder in my chest.

You don't have to Like it or repin it or remark on how you share my feelings let's be best friends. But now you know why I do it.

The sun sets, the music rises, and draws up with it a boundary that separates my work day from my family evening.

A trumpet. A signal.

• • •

You will notice a theme to my writing this year. 

This post is a signal.

I've created a trumpet for us.

After over six years of using FeedBlitz to deliver my posts via email, I finally created a newsletter. After publishing only a handful of posts last year, I decided that you deserve a more thoughtful delivery system. Make it worth it.

The newsletter tagline is "Infrequent but lovely." I'd love for you to sign up. No more checking for updates. Plus, with more control, I can finally offer exclusive content to my email subscribers. I've always wanted to do that, as I firmly believe email notices of my updates are the single best way to stay in touch.

I have plans for this year. I don't want you to miss them.

 

Subscribers click through for video if you can't see it.

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Enter the Arrogant Fool

The pressure from not writing enough has created a physical urgency at the front of my mind.

I've been writing at Velveteen Mind for almost six years. Since January 2007. And the whole time? I've had an ulterior motive.

It took more than two years to admit to you that I want to write a book. But that isn't the ulterior motive.

Being a blogger and wanting to write a book felt disdainful and naive enough. Admitting what I really wanted seemed foolish and arrogant. No, it would have been foolish and arrogant.

My friend Heather King from The Extraordinary Ordinary is tweeting me as I write this post. She knows what I'm writing about and is encouraging me to write this in the style of her Just Write meme, in which you don't self-edit, you just write. Such a romantic notion, I want to tell her, but I must destroy my words as I write them. "An army of critics throwing rocks in my mind" is my defense to her, my defense for why I can't just write.

My writing process isn't a romance novel. My writing process is a zombie apocalypse scene. 

Our friend Katherine Stone from Postpartum Progress tweets that I should throw rocks back. I insist that I do, I do throw rocks back at this internal army of critics that scoff at my notions and laugh at my arrogance, while screenshotting all of it for proof of my unworthiness. I tell Katherine that I do throw rocks back, but I insist on writing heavily-edited words on the rocks first and that really slows down my zingers.

Perhaps Heather would say that Just Write is a zombie apocalypse novel, too. A better one than mine, as in hers no one is stopping to kill every lumbering zombie along the path to the goal. Nor stopping to make sure the corpses understand why they were on the receiving end of the double-tap.

No, in hers, the players are focused on one goal and don't stop until they reach it.

Fine.

 

I've been writing for nearly six years with one ulterior motive: To write well enough that a literary agent will ask me to write a book.

I want to be asked.

And then feminism died.

Should I stop and explain why I had to shoot it twice? In the head? I want to be asked to dance, even though I know I'm a good dancer and that any number of partners would be happy to accept my hand.

Not the empowered self-rescuing princess, then.

(The Army of Critics is shouting that this "happy to accept" noise sounds arrogant. I nod. Confidence in my writing ability has never been my problem... largely because I take uncertainty by the shoulder and talk it down over an excruciating amount of time. I talk it to death. That's my editing process.)

I want to be asked to write a book. I want to be asked to do the one thing I want to do. I want to know what that email would look like, the one that starts off with "I love your blog. Your writing is brilliant. I'd like to represent you. Would you like to write a book?"

This is terrible, right? No amount of readers telling me to write a book would make me write a proposal and pitch an agent. Which means, in my mind, that I am squandering the interest of those incredibly patient readers and therefore that I probably don't deserve to write a book that would be read.

Being a writer is fun. Fun fun fun. Self-doubt is our crown. Self-sabotage is our weapon.

I am equal parts confidence and uncertainty. I am not alone. The purpose of this post is grounded in knowing that I'm not alone and that some of you are nodding your head at a sentence or five. So I'll just write it.

This blog? This blog is one long illustration of self-sabotage. As soon as I write something that garners interest or makes a connection, I stop writing. As soon as anything interesting happens, I stop writing.

Something interesting happened seven months ago. And then I stopped writing.

I wrote a post seven months ago about something bad that happened. I wrote it quickly and impetuously and published it. Heather would have been proud. A lot of you shared it, for which I am so grateful. Then Lisa from Smacksy, a mutual friend of Heather's and mine, linked to it.

One of her readers emailed me.

And it was the email. The one I've always wanted to receive.

subject line: Representation (this can't be. is this what I think it is?)

"I'm sure I'm very late to the game..." (you are. but I'm very patient. where have you been?!)
"... fantastic writer..."  (that will do just fine.)
"... while I assume you must already have an agent..." (I don't. I don't know what's wrong with you people. I'm right here.)

Seven months ago I signed with the Einstein Thompson Agency. The agent who found me is named Molly Reese. She asked me to write a book.

I wanted to be asked.

And then I stopped writing. And I never told you that the one thing I wanted arrived.

In the meantime, I've seen several of you sign with literary agents. Some of you make the announcement the day you sign, posting shots of yourselves with pen in hand. Others write, "I've been dying to tell you that two weeks ago..." Two weeks? I was still rereading the emails two weeks later.

My mind doesn't work that way. I... process.

This one just took nearly a year to process. A lot of people could have written the freaking book in that year. No matter.

The one thing that I wanted arrived and I accepted it and I'm telling you because now it's time to be happy and excited and hopeful and holy hell focused.

Focused!

I can't even tell you how good this feels. I still have decisions to make but for the past number of months I've systematically dissolved the more distracting elements of my working days. Every decision I've made has revolved around the core of writing and, more specifically, will this serve my goal?

If the answer was no, I eliminated it. Or began disentangling myself from it.

What do I want? Now that I have the literary agent, what do I want? I want to write and sell books. Not just write them, sell them. My dream is not to see my words in print or see my book on the shelf at Barnes & Noble (steady there, girl). My dream is for thousands of other people to hold my book in their hands and enjoy my writing. To find grounding tethers in my words or soothing elixir to draw a deeper breath.

Or just nod and laugh.

Now just to write a proposal. And sell it to a publisher. And write a book. Now just to write.

Thank you for convincing me. Ready? This won't be without challenge.

 

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