Category: Inspiration for your writing

Need some in­spir­a­tion for your writ­ing? Some ideas to help get the juices flowing.

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The power of focus — Part 2

Cougars, like all cats, fo­cus in­tently on their prey.

Some people find it easy to in­tensely fo­cus but, for a lot of us it re­quires some thought and plan­ning to achieve this state. My ba­sics to set the stage are time, place, and short breaks.

Time : A reg­u­lar sched­ule will al­low your body and brain to be­come ac­cus­tomed to the routine and settle in more easily.

Everyone has their own time of the day or night when they are at peak fo­cus. This is when you ex­per­i­ence your sharpest think­ing and cre­at­ive en­ergy. For me, it’s early morn­ing be­fore any­thing else clut­ters up my mind.

Place: This is the space where you keep your tools – pen and pa­per, com­puter, paint­brush, whatever. Going to your cre­at­ive spot at reg­u­lar times lets your cre­at­ive side know it’s time to wake up.

Ideally, this is a quiet place where you’ll be un­dis­turbed. If si­lence is im­possible, ear plugs or noise-can­cel­ling head­phones can shut out or re­duce sounds.

Distractions are the en­emy of fo­cus. It’s best to shut off or not re­spond to com­puter and cell phone no­ti­fic­a­tions while work­ing. Talking also dis­rupts the cre­at­ive cir­cuit, as it uses a dif­fer­ent part of the brain.

Although some people think they’re great at mul­ti­task­ing, re­search shows that, on av­er­age, it takes ap­prox­im­ately 25 minutes to re­gain fo­cus after an interruption.

Breaks: Just like our bod­ies need a break from sit­ting or stand­ing, the brain needs peri­od­ic time-outs to op­er­ate at max­im­um ca­pa­city. Ten to fif­teen minutes of activ­it­ies that re­quire little thought, such as fold­ing laun­dry, weed­ing, or stretch­ing, give your brain a rest.

Going out­side, be­ing in nature, and walk­ing are es­pe­cially help­ful. When I told chiro­pract­or, Alicia Steele, that I fre­quently find solu­tions to writ­ing prob­lems while walk­ing, she ex­plained that the bi­lat­er­al move­ment of arms and legs pro­motes activ­ity in both sides of the brain.

Taking a break and do­ing some­thing re­l­at­ively mind­less can en­hance fo­cus and cre­ativ­ity, but the key is to not think about the pro­ject you’re work­ing on.

While re­search­ing The Cougar, Beautiful, Wild and Dangerous, I was amazed at the big cat’s in­tense con­cen­tra­tion. When mov­ing in on prey, they nev­er shift their gaze away from it, even when circ­ling around or chan­ging position.

They’re totally fo­cused. Just like the man I saw jump­ing from a stand­still up six feet onto a con­crete ledge. (See The power of fo­cus – Part 1)

 

References:

“Want to be more cre­at­ive? Let your Mind Wander,” Sian Beilock, Psychology Today. 

“Keep the Focus on Your Long-term Vision,” Mayo Clinic.

How to Get Control of Your Time and Your Life by Alan Lakein.

 

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The power of focus — Part 1

A Great Blue Heron look­ing for fish.

It was a cold and blustery, yet thor­oughly splen­did fall day when I roun­ded a corner near the mar­ina and saw the man. He crouched slightly at the bot­tom of con­crete stairs, arms ex­ten­ded, el­bows bent and palms fa­cing each oth­er. The most un­usu­al thing was that he re­mained per­fectly still for at least two minutes. He re­minded me of a her­on wait­ing for a fish to spear.

He was at the entry­way of the path I wanted to take so I paused to fig­ure out what was go­ing on. Then, In one flu­id move­ment, he lowered his arms, raised them and jumped lightly onto the six foot con­crete ledge in front of him. The fact that the heels of his feet hung over the edge did noth­ing to hamper him from slowly and grace­fully stand­ing up.

I was awed by his strength and body con­trol. But even more so by his in­tense fo­cus. And he had good reas­on to fo­cus. If his jump had failed, he would have fallen back­wards onto the con­crete, per­haps break­ing his back, head or end­ing his life altogether.

Dumbfounded, I didn’t even see him re­turn to his start­ing po­s­i­tion. But there he was again, crouched at the bot­tom of the stairs with no dis­cern­able signs of movement.

He seemed ob­li­vi­ous to me or any­thing else but I wor­ried about dis­tract­ing him, so slowly con­tin­ued my walk with head tilted down­wards, peek­ing at him from un­der the brim of my hat as he ex­ecuted two more per­fect jumps.

By now, I was close enough to no­tice that he was speak­ing to someone, through Bluetooth ear buds after each jump. Was the per­son on the oth­er end coach­ing him? Or were they a safety link in case he fell?

Later, I wished I’d stopped to talk to him but there was no way I wanted to in­ter­rupt his con­cen­tra­tion. As a writer, I’ve been in a sim­il­ar state a few times — sur­fa­cing from a story to real­ize hours have passed in­stead of five minutes, or to dis­cov­er the faint sound I’d been hear­ing was really a repair­man pound­ing on the door, ir­rit­ated that I wasn’t let­ting him in when he could see me sit­ting at my desk.

Intense fo­cus is not easy to achieve. Especially these days with cell­phones and oth­er devices read­ily to hand. But it’s an art worth achieving.

Check out the up­com­ing November blog to read about cou­gars and fo­cus, as well as sci­en­tific­ally proven ways to gen­er­ate that state of mind.

Photo cred­it Joshua Goddard

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Light on the Serengeti

 

A few people have asked why I have a pic­ture of the Serengeti plains on the bio page of my website.

The an­swer is simple: this is my fa­vour­ite photo from a trip to Tanzania. In fact, I like it so much, I re­cently had it en­larged into an 18 x 36-inch can­vas wrap that now hangs in my house.

It was taken when our two sa­fari jeeps stopped lit­er­ally in the middle of nowhere, away from the kopjes where ex­tens­ive lion prides lolled and the life and death drama of wilde­beest and cro­codiles along the Mara River. I wasn’t the only per­son struck by the raw, open beauty; our little herd of thir­teen hu­mans was mostly si­lent, ex­cept for a few whispers.

Some people ask why I didn’t choose a pho­to­graph with an­im­als. Believe me, I have tons of pho­tos fea­tur­ing ele­phants, leo­pards, mon­keys and more. But, to me, the Serengeti im­age goes deep­er. It’s about the land and sky, the smell and feel of Africa, and the way the sun touches it all. It’s a place, once vis­ited, that is nev­er forgotten.

The im­mens­ity of this land­scape that can stretch be­yond hu­man sight vi­brates with a si­lence that is palp­able. Eyes scan the ho­ri­zon while ears feel wide open, hear­ing only the gentle rust­ing of golden grasses.

There was a sense of won­der and an­ti­cip­a­tion, know­ing that even though the land ap­peared bare of life, there was the pos­sib­il­ity that at any mo­ment, a lion, cheta, zebra or buf­falo could set paw or hoof in our viewscape.

Even though it’s hanging in the hall, I can see the Serengeti im­age from my bed. If I wake up at the right time, the sun shines in through a win­dow, high­light­ing only the sky por­tion of the pic­ture. It looks like the sun is rising in the Serengeti.

While the morn­ing light works its ma­gic, I of­ten con­sider the vast land­scape of my life – some be­hind me, some yet to come — and all the pos­sib­il­it­ies there are to explore.

As a writer, these of­ten re­volve around my cur­rent pro­ject. Will I fin­ish the chapter I’m work­ing on today? The en­tire book by the end of the year? Or will the story sud­denly fol­low a dif­fer­ent tan­gent, tak­ing me on a new journey?

The end­less po­ten­tial for com­bin­ing ideas and words is an as­pect of writ­ing that I’m par­tic­u­larly fond of. And now the Serengeti re­minds me of that every day.

Copyright on all pho­tos Paula Wild

 

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The pros and cons of writing with a view

 

Waves pound­ing on a rocky out­crop­ping, an eagle perched in a fir tree, the sky drenched in pink and or­ange as the sun slips be­yond the ho­ri­zon. Every writer dreams of a view like this. But is it be­ne­fi­cial? Does it beck­on the cre­at­ive muse? Nudge you into writ­ing faster and better?

In my thirty-plus years as a writer, I’ve worked in many spaces. The first was at a desk in the corner of the liv­ing room. My nine-year old step­daugh­ter had a tough time un­der­stand­ing why she wasn’t sup­posed to in­ter­rupt me.

But I’ve also been lucky enough to write where I had views of wa­ter, treed areas and wild­life. I fondly re­call the little sum­mer house I ren­ted as a private writ­ing re­treat from Shannon and Brian on their is­land sanc­tu­ary in the Nuchatlitz archipelago.

I loved my writ­ing re­treat in this little cab­in and spend­ing time with Shannon and Brian at Nuchatlitz.

My fa­vour­ite writ­ing space, how­ever, was in an Arts & Crafts her­it­age house I lived in for dec­ades. Two huge transom win­dows provided ex­pans­ive views of dog­wood trees, large flower­ing shrubs, and maple trees with leaves as big as din­ner plates.

Visual memor­ies in­clude a snow­fall of pink cherry blos­soms, a hum­ming­bird pier­cing a small owl’s breast with its beak, and a deer lick­ing the in­side of a fer­al rabbit’s ear.

This is where I wrote a weekly arts column for the loc­al news­pa­per, hun­dreds of arti­cles for main­stream and al­tern­at­ive magazines and six non-fic­tion books. But this was not my most pro­duct­ive writ­ing space. That was a tiny room upstairs.

An en­gross­ing book to work on, The Cougar de­man­ded my full at­ten­tion. The phone and even the sound of my part­ner walk­ing around in oth­er areas of the house were un­wel­come intrusions.

So I took my laptop to the grey room. The only fur­niture was a bed, a desk and a book­case. To my de­light, I couldn’t hear any­thing in the rest of the house. And I didn’t have ac­cess to the Internet, so an­oth­er dis­trac­tion was eliminated.

There was an un­ex­pec­ted quirk, though. The desk faced the win­dow, and I couldn’t work with the light shin­ing in my eyes. There was no room to move the desk, so I closed the blinds. Then I real­ized that light from the oth­er bed­room shone in the open door­way, cre­at­ing glare on my screen. I shut the door, only to dis­cov­er that the light from the over­head fix­ture also cre­ated screen glare. So, I turned it off.

I didn’t know if I could write solely by the light of my laptop screen. But strangely, it worked. I felt like a cap­tain at the helm of a space­ship ca­reen­ing into out­er space. I couldn’t hear any­thing, see any­thing, or google any­thing. It was just me and The Cougar. And I wrote up a storm.

The up­shot? Having a view to write by is lovely but not ne­ces­sar­ily the most effective.

That said, no mat­ter where you shape your stor­ies, it’s al­ways a good idea to peri­od­ic­ally give your eyes a break from the screen. That’s the per­fect time to find a win­dow with a view. And if you have time, to go out­side into it.

Top im­age is the view from one of the win­dows in my former her­it­age house.