Writer's Block? Clean Your Desk!

Sometimes, all it takes is a few minutes of time away from your manuscript to get your head in the game. Of course, some authors really do take too much time and this is the reason their stories never get written. When we say take some time off, I am saying no more than a day or two. But I am going to take this for a different spin today. 

It's time for a little house cleaning.

Some of you simply cannot write because your head is cluttered. And your head is that workspace. If you have too much going on around where you want to write, you will simply not be focus on what you need to get accomplished. This means if your desk is messy. If you have too many tabs open on your computer. If you have your cell phone open to be ready for any text message or social media alert to pop up, you will not get your writing accomplished. 

I work with my students on this all of the time in my classrooms. This is something called FLOW THINKING. I first learned about this from a book called THE RISE OF SUPERMAN: DECODING THE SCIENCE OF HUMAN PERFORMANCE by Steven Kotler. He talks about the writing of  Mihály Csíkszentmihályi (here is the link from Wikipedia simply because I can never spell his darn name). In any case, the concept is simple. When you eliminate all of those distractions, your mind and eyes focus only on the task at hand. 

Business people have found great success at this. By simply turning everything off (including setting calendars to out of office or in meeting status) closing doors, and just working on one project at a time, they can often accomplish the work quicker and more efficiently.

So what does this have to do with your workspace? Simple! You have a lot going on there. The odds are, your writing space has ideas for your next project, notes from your editor (hopefully) ideas about your characters, post it notes for who knows what, shopping lists, messages from kids, to do lists, doodles you drew when you were bored, etc, etc, etc.

Go clean it up! It won't take long. Go find the right place for that stuff. Throw away those notes with the tasks you have finished. 

I did that over the weekend before starting a project. My son had been using my desk so I sorted his things and mine. I had two copies of my favorite Hacker and Sommer A WRITER'S REFERENCE on my desk so I put the 9th edition in my cabinet and left the 10th on my desk. I put away a couple of projects that I know I will get to in a couple of weeks. 

In 10 minutes, the desk was clear and I was then able to tackle 3 tasks in record speed. Why? The desk was clear and I felt like I was "starting the day new!"

So go clean your desk! Trust me, you will feel better!