Creativity Bubbles

This week my accountability group is blogging about how we buckle down and focus on our writing to inspire our creativity as a few of us are participating in this year’s NaNoWriMo challenge. Last week’s post on research strategies and sources is also part of our How I Write series.

The title of this post is a play on words: both in the sense that it rises from within and finding that sphere of focus that lures the muse out into action. I find my creativity bubbles best when I can control my ability to narrow my focus, limit distractions and have something to hold me accountable. This post is a bit of an expansion on the one we did a while back called “Getting Down to Business” which looked at the routines we rely on to settle into writing.

Narrow Focus to improve Creativity

I’ve always been able to hyper-focus on something that interests me or is mind-numbingly tedious. Give me a good book, a puzzle to solve or get me into the zone with a sewing project or organizing data or text and I can tune out the world. I’d probably get in trouble for this, but my husband has the same ability, perhaps more so. It’s not unusual for one of us to walk up behind the other, ask a question and be ignored until we forcibly insert ourselves into the other’s attention bubble.

I know I used to drive my roommate nuts in college. In order to study, I’d turn on music to drown out the noise from the rest of the hall. Unfortunately for her, what worked best for me was loud and obnoxious like Run D.M.C or The Violent Femmes. I knew them well enough that I could tune them out as well and they provided excellent coverage for any noise on the floor.

Lately, for writing, I’ve found that I can’t listen to music with lyrics if I’m trying to write down new words of my own. Does. Not. Work. Doesn’t matter how well I know it or not, it’s distracting. My solution? Instrumental music. Preferably Peter Gabriel’s Passion soundtrack. There’s just something about the building rhythm of the percussion on those tracks that intensifies from the beginning through to the end of the hour simply pulls me along and the words with it.

The song in the video below is a great example of how the music builds throughout. If you have any suggestions for stuff that sounds similar, please let me know! I’ve found Japanese drumming to be VERY close to what I’m looking for, but I’m always looking for new stuff too!

My next album of choice is the soundtrack from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon for similar reasons. I usually get pulled out of my zone when the song “A Love Before Time” comes up. I often skip both the English and the Mandarin versions because of this, but at least they’re at the end. I’ve also listened to some other instrumentals pieces, but nothing works as well for me as the Gabriel soundtrack.

Limit Distractions to Creativity

I’m horrible about distractions. I’ve always needed to take frequent breaks and rest/refocus my eyes as I’m far sighted and hate my glasses. This usually means looking out the window. Hummingbirds are a HUGE distraction. But any movement in my peripheral vision will pull me out. I’d probably do better with blinders than headphones. I used to write with headphones (more as a signal to the other parents waiting) during my kids’ martial arts practices, but I lost that hour of writing time when they gave that up.

A ringing phone drives me nuts. It has to be answered by the second ring or it kills me. I could probably turn it off, but I feel I need to be available in case school calls about one of the kids. With CallerID there’s no excuse other than being unable to stand the sound of it ringing not to ignore calls I don’t need to take. If only the telemarketers were as trainable as everyone else to respect my “office hours”.

Trying to work when the kids are home is just asking to be interrupted. They’re teens, so they should be self-sufficient by now. Honestly, they mostly are… but as any mom knows, as soon as your attention is directed elsewhere, like to a phone call or something you’d like to do for yourself… BAM! There they are, like magic. This is why my writing time usually falls during the day between dropping them off at school and picking them up again. You can imagine the havoc this plays with my ability to focus when my son is home with a migraine, especially when he missed an entire quarter when they knocked him down daily and then we did home-study for a quarter. Luckily, he’s doing much better this year. Although he has missed a few days here and there, it’s not constant. I also find working in the mornings on weekends before anyone else is up to be a good time.

Staying Accountable

So that brings me to the internet. I’m my own worst distraction some days. There was a running joke in college about “Study breaks” which really translated into “I need to take a break from the fun and study”. I always do better knowing someone else is working “with” me. Or at least at the same time. This is also a holdover from college where my now-husband would force me to work and more importantly finish my undergrad thesis by saying “If I have to work, so do you.” So I did.

These last two factors are why chat challenges work so well for me. I find I work best with 20-30 minute “sprints” with a few minutes between to refocus my eyes, check-in with whomever I’m working with and be accountable for how my time was spent. The #1k1hr challenges on twitter are too long and I find myself drifting away from the task to randomly surf. I don’t think I could use one of the internet blocking programs because I frequently look something up for research and go right back to writing. Research like that doesn’t usually pull me away from the project for long, it’s undirected or unspecific research that is dangerous.

Deadlines and I are not good acquaintances yet. This is one of the reasons I keep coming back to NaNoWriMo. Some days are better than others for productivity, but I feel like I need to be doing this on a consistent basis. I’ve tried writing trackers and such, and unless I’m already dialed into the project, it’s not a motivator. But knowing so many others are working toward the same goal? Yeah, that speaks to me and I can’t always ignore the call.

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YOUR TURN: How do you shut it all off and just focus? Do you play music to block the world? Do you shut yourself into a room for a few hours? Can you manage it while surrounded by others?

And if you’d like to read about how the rest of my group approaches their research, you can find their blogs here:

* Alexia Reed * Danie Ford * Emma G. Delaney *
* Angeleque Ford * Kimberly Farris *