Distraction, Focus, Silence
By David Corbett | January 14, 2022 |
Not one person in a hundred knows how to be silent and listen, no, nor even to conceive what such a thing means. Yet, only then can you detect, beyond the fatuous clamour, the silence of which the universe is made. —Samuel Beckett
In her December post (“The Hidden—But Crucial—Mad Skill”) Kathryn Craft discussed holding fast to the creative spirit despite the overwhelming difficulties and constant, even essential disappointment one endures in its pursuit.
In particular, she provided a quote from Martha Graham that has continued to slosh around inside my head ever since:
There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique, and if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium; and be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is, not how it compares with other expression. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open. No artist is pleased. There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer, divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.
In my own November post (“Why I Am Not Writing”), I noted some of the difficulties I was having getting back into the daily habits required of a novelist. I won’t revisit those here, but in the interim I’ve managed to get back to my desk, only to discover an entirely different difficulty, one I can’t help but imagine I share with a great many of you.
I’m speaking of distraction. After five years of daily dread and doomscrolling, scratching the FOMO itch (Fear Of Missing Out) by constantly checking the news, I’ve found that I’ve developed the very bad habit of letting my attention swing like a weather vane with every stray thought.
This has only become more evident as I’ve tried to focus on writing. Joyce Carol Oates considers interruption a writer’s greatest nemesis. How unsettling, in my case, to realize the enemy lies within.
Following the advice of the Israeli historian-philosopher Yuval Noah Harari, I’ve returned to meditation, hoping to get a grip on this. But as anyone who meditates knows, it ain’t as easy as it looks.
There is quite possibly nothing more difficult for a flibbertigibbet like me than to sit still. Even when I do, it’s not as though tranquility magically descends. The Buddhists have a saying: the mind is a monkey. My mind is a whole forest full of them, chattering away in the trees.
Once, when we were in the car together, my late wife remarked that she could literally hear me thinking. “You have a very noisy brain.”
The constant flux of mental floaters we think of as consciousness—our thoughts, our worries, our plans, our fears—distracts from the deeper awareness Samuel Beckett talks about in the quote that opens this post, an awareness that requires silence. To be creative, ironically, being conscious isn’t enough. We need to sink into something deeper.
And as the Martha Graham quote suggests, the perfectionist need to be good, to do the job well, only impedes our ability to find that deeper, quieter place.
That realization has been particularly helpful in getting my focus back. For even when I manage to ignore the constant urges to check my email or Twitter or Facebook, or resist worrying about all I have to do before we move cross-country at the end of March—or succumb to any of the other digressive impulses that arise in my mind, like earworms—the doubts about the worth of what I’m doing, its quality, its merit, rise up as but one more level of distraction.
I’m taking heart in the fact that, little by little, the words are coming. As for their worth—that’s why the gods invented revision.
What has proven most distracting for you of late? What tactics do you use to “keep your butt in the chair”? What’s proven most helpful? What hasn’t?
David Corbett (he/him) is the author of seven novels: The Devil’s Redhead, Done for a Dime (a New York Times Notable Book), Blood of Paradise (nominated for numerous awards, including the Edgar, Do They Know I’m Running?, The Mercy of the Night, The Long-Lost Love Letters of Doc Holliday, and The Truth Against the World. He has also published the story collection Thirteen Confessions and the novella The Devil Prayed and Darkness Fell.
David’s short fiction and poetry have appeared in a broad array of magazines and anthologies, with pieces twice selected for Best American Mystery Stories.
His non-fiction has appeared in numerous venues, including the New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Narrative, Zyzzyva, MovieMaker, The Writer, and Writer’s Digest.
He has taught both online and in classroom settings through the UCLA Extension’s Writers’ Program, Book Passage, LitReactor, 826 Valencia, The Grotto in San Francisco, and at numerous writing conferences across the US, Canada, and Mexico. In January 2013 Penguin published his textbook on the craft of characterization, The Art of Character (“A writer’s bible that will lead to your character’s soul.” —Elizabeth Brundage), and Writer’s Digest published his follow-up, The Compass of Character, in October 2019.
Ahhhh, yes! You said it perfectly. Who hasn’t been going through distractions and sometimes just plain being lazy about writing? I hate to blame Covid because I struggled with some of this before Covid. I’ve been trying to get back into my 4th novel this whole past year and failed more times than I wrote. I did get my short story out on Kindle for Jan. 1st so that was one plus. I found that the new year of 2022 sparked me. Something about January, the cold, the emptiness and wide open spaces out the windows has settled me down. And, I rearranged my desk! Sounds silly but cleaning up the “old” and adding a few new items (pictures, plants, flowers) served to draw me to sit down and open the manuscript. I wrote 25 pages so far this month. I love the Martha Graham quote! “Keep the channel open” is beautiful. What a great mantra! Thank you, David.
Thanks, Paula:
Thanks, Paula. As I read down the comments so far (down to Carol Dougherty’s), the four themes that seem to emerge in how people deal with this problem are:
1. Change things up (including take a walk or some other physical activity). Glad to hear this is working for you in particular.
2. Don’t force it. (One learns this in meditation–don’t get hung up on your thoughts, let them come, let them go. Or as Carol put it: Don’t let your thoughts toss you away.)
3. Play (i.e., let go of the perfectionism that stifles the unconscious)
4. Get hold of Cal Newport’s DEEP WORK.
My guess is these are not mutually exclusive, but separate aspects of the same approach–a suppler, deeper, less dogmatic approach to the work.
Again, thanks for chiming in.
Add ‘Block the internet.’ There are many programs which do this for you. I use Freedom on my Mac. I can get out of the time block I set – by restarting my computer. I usually don’t. Knowing the world can wait for those few hours also helps – I eagerly jump on the release, but I usually also get something written during that time. As a person with a damaged brain from chronic illness, I am more distractible than most, but this really helps. I can be distracted – but not now.
Who could resist that quote from Samuel Beckett? Not me. As someone who’s meditated for many years and also pondered the source of the creative spark (big ones and small ones), I’m moved to offer a reflection. Hopefully it won’t sound pompous …
Here goes.
Just as silence doesn’t come by trying to get rid of thought—that is, by viewing thought as an enemy to be conquered—I don’t think creativity (necessarily) comes by insisting on staying in that chair, no matter what. If silence comes by relaxing the compulsion to “do silence,” then maybe creativity comes in the same way.
That could mean getting up, walking, chopping onions. Entering the body. Giving space. At least, that’s how it seems to work for me. It seems to free up what Stephen King has called “the boys in the basement”—a relaxed, subconscious, non-directed force that my determined “butt-in-the-chair” self can’t control. As King has written: “There is a muse, but he’s not going to come fluttering down into your writing room and scatter creative fairy-dust all over your typewriter or computer. He lives in the ground. He’s a basement kind of guy. You have to descend to his level, and once you get down there you have to furnish an apartment for him to live in.” That opens a new question, of course: what kind of furniture does he (or she) need?
Maybe he/she needs me to get out of the chair and let those distractions take me where they like. Sometimes, anyway.
Barbara, I couldn’t agree with you more. We are physical beings and we experience everything through our senses. A walk helps to clear the head. And a rosary walk, even better. The writing flows better after.
Thanks for this, Barbara. One of the great quotes my favorite math professor always used to remind us of how creative work gets done comes from William James: We learn to ski in the summer and learn to swim in the winter. What he meant that, we put all the hard work in trying to solve a problem or problems, and will likely hit a wall at some point. But the mind does not stop working on the problem even if we consciously move on to something else. We need a time of repose to let the unconscious mind find the patterns and connections our conscious mind was missing.
Another insight from my math days was the importance of walking. In Germany, students traditionally begin classes early and work all morning,. Then, after lunch, they take a long walk with their professors. Something about the pace of walking mirrors that of thought.
As for the guys in the basement–I’ve never heard that analogy before, but it seems to connect with Kathryn’s comments about play below.
Thanks as always for reading and commenting so thoughtfully.
Have you been spying on my chattering monkey brain? Seriously, thank you for this. Ironically this morning I woke up and didn’t reach for my phone. Instead, I told myself that I was the kind of person who could be fully present. It’s more an aspiration than reality, but I’m hoping that reminder – that mantra – will help me be less scattered.
Boy howdy, LJ, do I hear ya. There’s the whole ball of wax: Ignore the phone, ignore the constant urge to check email or the social media platform of your choice. This is where meditation has helped me–recognizing distracting urges and realizing I can simply let them go. Best of luck!
Wow. Such an uplifting post. It hits about a thousand marks for me. Thanks for your candor and wit. I am going to tape the Martha Graham quote to my forehead and look in the mirror often. :)
Cantor & Witt, Attorneys at Law.
(Sorry, couldn’t help myself.)
There welfare a lot of great quotable passages in Kathryn’s post, which I realized once again when I went back and re-read it.
Geez, sorry. Typing too fast. There WERE a lot of great quotable passages.
Sheesh…
Hi David, what fun to see that something I wrote (okay, Martha Graham) inspired you! That’s the best of what Writer Unboxed has to offer, isn’t it? You may know of Cal Newport’s book DEEP WORK; it really helped me in the distraction department. Here’s my new approach to thawing my creative spirit: play. I opened a brand-new document, titled it as with my (many times revised, rejected, but much beloved by my agent and me) manuscript, adding the word “Play” after it. No title page as if it will be submitted. My goal is letting loose with these characters. Taking risks, outer space the limit, sniffing out surprises on every page. May find something I’ll keep, maybe not, but who cares—it’s play! And for the first time in a long time, I’m having fun, and I’m excited to get back to my writing desk. Where I’m heading now. Try it!
Great idea, Kathryn! I am going to try that today. I’ve become such a Grinch about my own work, it has me spinning my wheels in revision land and going nowhere. The play idea sounds like a great way to break out of the perfectionism doldrums. Lots of good stuff in this post today.
Hi Sheree and Kathryn:
I think remembering that play and creativity are inseparable is an important step in getting into the groove. My problem has been that it’s easy for me to put words down–too easy. Before I play, I need to settle down into a deeper range of feeling, otherwise that ol’ monkey mind is quite content to jabber away–giving me page after page of stuff I’ll end up cutting.
David, kudos for articulating these sentiments so well and for giving me a juicy
new word. (You flibbertigibbet, you.) I think of distractions, especially those from technology,
as a lease around my neck, constantly yanking me. But as you said, realization is a good
place to start. For me, less dinging noise helps, such as the obvious, not writing with my phone
in sight and using SelfControl to shut down tempting apps/email.
And I make pacts with myself (“I will write for one hour or x many words) and
sett goals that need to be met or my inner critic shows us and she’s so witchy.
I’d love to hear others thoughts as well.
Technology has brought so many goods but I do wonder as a species if we are
evolving to be weaker with attention. I feel I am less attentive than I was five years back.
Thanks for this thought provoking post. There is solace in knowing we are not
alone but with others fighting this distraction battle.
Write on.
Setting goals is a great strategy, Rose. It seems we focus much more easily when we’re looking at a far distant horizon. And sometimes those short-term finish lines end up evaporating because we find ourselves on a roll.
Love this post, David–relatable for a lot of us, I bet, especially in today’s world.
I’m guessing you’ve already heard about it or someone has suggested it, but Cal Newport’s book Deep Work was a game-changer for me in this regard.
Thanks for the solidarity.
Thanks to you and Kathryn I am now the proud owner of a copy of Deep Work. Very grateful for the tip.
I had a friend who lived with Rheumatoid arthritis by meditating. She was also a writer, whose ideas were so numerous, she had a hard time pinning them down. I am stressing her creativity, as if her illness, that burden, freed her. Sometimes it’s best to just START. To not expect that the writing of that day will work. But it is necessary to try. You can’t bemoan your blank page if you are not willing to fill it–with something. As always, thanks, David.
So true, Elizabeth. Sometimes I tell myself: Just write a sentence. Now write another. And so on. And if I feel like getting up (to pour the infamous second cup of coffee — sneak reference to Ron Carlson Writes A Story), I tell myelf: NO, keep going for a bit longer.
Sometimes it really is that simple.
David, I remember Kathryn’s lovely letter from December too. It was such a gift. And now yours. I’m glad you’ve been able to return to the desk and quiet some of the monkeys to be able to think more deeply. I’ve been highly distracted by covid, partly because it’s a train-wreck that I cannot avert my eyes from because in my youth, it is what I studied (microbiology/biochemistry/biophysics). The public policies implemented, starting with masks, then the lockdowns, the vaxx mandates, make no sense at all. The fallout is already terrible. Yet, the private writing has saved me, given me a place to vent, to process, to try and understand why. Not that I do but I’ve managed to turn it into a type of Deep Work that Cal Newport writes about (I’m a fan). Another is seeking refuge in the one Person who is Truth. I begin and end my day grounded in Him who holds all things and throughout the day I pray fervently for Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. This prayer has to come true because our Lord Jesus Himself taught us to pray it. The day is filled with pet care, cooking, cleaning, laundry, writing, reading, singing. It’s a good life and I’m often reminded of Kathleen Norris’s slim gem Quotidian Mysteries: Laundry, Liturgy and Woman’s Work.
Thanks for the comment, Vijaya. And for but another Deep Work nod.
really good to see this written down; i’m struggling with the same thing. I’m finding the ‘swiss cheese’ model that we’ve learned for covid interventions seem to apply: nothing is perfect but the more strategies I use the better. 1) pad of paper with pen to write down ‘to do’s I think of, 2) iphone do not disturb settings and imessage log out from my computer to keep phone/texts from interrupting my concentration, 3) focus keeper, a pomodoro app, with the loud clock ticking to remind me to stay on task, as well as the promise of a break to deal with all those super important things I know I need to do. Still not perfect, but those are all moderately helpful. I’m very interested in other ideas, too!
Thanks, Dani. (For some reason the site isn’t letting me “like” your comment.) I think all of your strategies seem wise, and there are a handful of other excellent suggestions in this comment thread. Good luck!
Okay, I finally got the site to okay my like of your comment. Onward!
Hi Gang: Thank for the lovely comments. I will get to each of them later. I got a late start on the morning due to my being up until 3:30 AM reading a book I should never have started right before bed. Now my wife and I have some errands to do that require early-in-the-day attention. But I will be back to join the fray. Carry on! And once again: thanks.
David, I smiled at your “noisy brain” and monkey mind! When I first started meditating I felt like my mind was a three-ring circus, completely out of my control. The only difference now is that when my mind goes wild, I know from experience that it’s part of a cycle or a process. Along the way, I’ve come to trust the process. What distracts me most these days? Fear, always. Money, a lot (a subset of the fear). And I remember Natalie Goldberg sharing one of the things she learned from Katagiri-roshi: Don’t get tossed away. So I try not to let my distractions toss me away.
When I’m writing, the way I use the meditation is to drop deeper into the thoughts and not fight them. Sometimes, what’s most important rises to the surface of that mental soup. Sometimes, the movie starts in my mind and I see what I want to write play out for me, with all of the detail, characters, setting, conflict in my mind’s eye. Sometimes that helps me write. When it doesn’t, it’s still there in me.
Thanks for your questions, David, and for your always-seeking spirit. It’s one of the things that inspires me these days. You and Mette and your pup stay safe.
Hey Carol. “Don’t get tossed away.” I like that. For me, it’s more a case of being swept away — in the current of thoughts and worries. As for fear: both I and Mette, who seldom if ever has bad dreams, have been woken up by anxiety nightmares lately because of the move. We’ve both admitted that there’s just this nagging sense that we’re forgetting or overlooking something.
One of the good things about insomnia, though: I get a lot of ideas for revisions while I’m lying there! And part of that is because, given the darkness and the quiet, I actually can “drop deeper” into my thoughts as you mention. Just wish I could sleep, too. :-)
You stay safe as well.
Thank you, David, for giving voice to my own struggles in your post! A forest full of monkeys – gosh, that’s my mind too! Right now, with my partner bed-bound with a fractured ankle, and our little one doing online schooling, barely a half-hour passes without someone needing me for something. My mind is so scattered all the time that presence and focus remain elusive.
I recently read Oliver Burke’s 4000 Weeks, after reading an excerpt at
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/aug/07/on-earth-4000-weeks-so-why-lose-time-online-distraction-oliver-burkeman
Two sentences in that article spoke to me very much, and I share them in the hope that they’ll help you too.
“When we succumb to distraction, we’re motivated by the desire to flee something painful about our experience of the present.”
“What we think of as distractions aren’t the cause of our being distracted. They’re just the places we go to seek relief.”
I try to look at my current experiences as practice for staying with the unpleasant, constantly facing up to the fact that so little in life is actually in my ‘control’. Writing is the same for me – an encounter with my deepest desires and fears, sometimes exhilarating, sometimes a painful reminder that I have no control whatsoever over how my words will be received. The discomfort is inevitable. We just try to meet and overcome it the best we can each day, knowing that a ‘good’ day will soon be followed by a ‘bad’ one, no matter how much we practise. I highly recommend Burke’s book.
Thanks, Anitha. Wise words. You guys are killing me with the book recommendations! (But I love those two quotes — thank you.) I have found that insight to be true–distraction is an attempt to escape some kind of discomfort (or boredom) with the present. And I’m teaching myself to recognize that ans say, “It’s okay. The discomfort won’t last. Let’s get back to work, shall we?”
Hope your partner heals quickly. And may your “good days” multiply.
David:
Your post resonated with me on so many points. I have two main distractions. One bad: online ads. It seems you research anything online — boots, ice cream, ranch land in Louisiana — and you are bombarded by ads for boots, ice cream, and ranch land in Louisiana. I’ve resorted to turning off the ads when I have the option, saving me some time and mental stress and possibly an addiction to caramel peanut butter ice cream.
One less bad: an inspiration for another story. I come across a news item and ideas come fast and furious. The more fully formed ones linger and flare until I scribble down at least a synopsis. Some ideas lead to complete stories but many only drain my excitement for my current WIP until it’s a struggle to get back into it.
Incidentally, Forest Full of Monkeys sounds like a good name for a novel. Or an indie rock band
I use an ad blocker and a VPN, which helps keep a lot of that stuff away. Alicia posted above that using an internet blocker like Freedom helps her. I tried that but found it inhibted my online research (which can be a problem if you’re not disciplied, says he who is often undisciplined).
As for the other problem — I admire the energy of your imagination. Yeah, that can be distracting, and sometimes pursuing a new idea is just a form of writer’s block regarding the project in front of you, but as problems go, that one’s not as bad as most.
David, I’ve recently subscribed to George Saunders’ Story Club newsletter, which has been excellent in close readings of pieces of writing and in the friendly, open way he discusses storytelling and story-making, and in the great comments of the readers.
He assigned an exercise of a on-the-number 200-word story that only uses 50 words (which can be repeated), suggesting that those kinds of constraints can take you out of being “writerly” and push you to find other ways of writing and focusing. I thought that a bit of his commentary after the exercise was interesting and relevant to your piece:
The beauty of this exercise is that it shows us that we usually walk around with a certain idea of the writer we are in our head. When we sit down to write, that writer is the one we start channeling. In that instant, our brain function changes. We’re less open to what the story wants to do, to what that language generator inside of us wants to do. We’re working within the narrow range of how we think we should write. This exercise shuts down that way of thinking by keeping it busy with the practicalities of the exercise, which leaves the rest of the mind asking, “Well, what else have we got?” That is: “What other writers might be in here?”
Maybe this exercise is a bit like dancing while drunk and filming it. In playback, we might catch a glimpse of something we don’t normally attempt, but that we like. And if we like it, we might want to do it on purpose, later.
I hope it’s OK for me to quote him out of his newsletter without permission, but he seems like an affable guy, so I’ll risk it.
Hi, Tom. I’m not entirely sure I understand the exercise, but I love the idea of getting outside our standard “writer’s head.” The same problem can arise when you own a character’s voice to such an extent you stop seeing how things might be otherwise (and more interesting).
BTW: I sincerely doubt that Mr. Saunders would fault you for championing his newsletter.
As for dancing while drunk — may I never be filmed thusly.
Always distracted by email, FB, etc. I leave my laptop running while I revise on the desktop. Rule is no media open with the MS! Beaks allow me to walk out to check mail, but I’m having good results in concentration with my new rule.
LOVE. LOVE. LOVE. this post, David. Thank you for settling into the deeper reaches to conjure it. It is Saturday morning on a blustery day in Texas. I’m glad I saved your post for this quiet moment to commune with it and the wind chimes outside.
Coming late to this post with two further suggestions:
In addition or instead of Pomodoro, I use a calm noise machine to provide a kind of white-noise distraction. It works well for me. https://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/
Like others I’m sure, part of my distraction is ideas for other projects that pop up. I follow Twyla Tharp’s advice in her wonderful book The Creative Habit. When such an idea pops up, she creates a bin for it, continuing to toss relevant items into it while she continues work on her primary project. I’ve been doing this & my current WIP came from one of those bins, complete with an impressive amount of research and bits of pre-writing.