The Sounds of Silence

Simon and Garfunkel’s famous song, “Sounds of Silence,” sort of says it all. What role does silence play in your daily writing? In today’s maddening world, silence is often a precious commodity. Noise is all around us. Sometimes, it’s white noise that fills the background with steady soothing sounds like the whirr of a furnace motor on a cold day. At other times the sounds can be deafening like the sound of a T.V. in the den. Whatever sort of sounds you live with, you may find that the amount and volume can seriously affect your writing.

Younger people—those under 30—have grown up with lots of sounds all day long. Many do several things at the same time—listening to music on a set of earbuds, texting on a cell phone, watching a video on their computer, all while doing homework or work-related tasks. If they write, they carry on multitasking while writing, and their writing suffers because of it.

Highly successful writers surround themselves with silence if they can afford to. Some purchase  a house in the country and set up a study, often separate from the house, itself, in which to work.
   
Like many other writers of his day, playwright Eugene O’Neill need absolute quiet to work. He built a house on his ranch in California that had a study surrounded and cushioned by three empty rooms. It kept out all extraneous noise. And back then, O’Neill didn’t have the Internet and Email to distract him. Can you imagine how much more you can get finish if you banned all interruptions. But realistically, that may not be entirely possible.

For more writers, building a reclusive study away from their main residence is just a pipe dream. Most have to contend with disturbances from their spouses and children and perhaps from the family pet. Having your pet cat jump up on your lap may sound cozy, but it’s downright annoying when you’re writing a particularly difficult passage.

So what can you do to obtain silence in your writing workplace? For one thing, take a serious look at where you do your writing. If you’re writing at the kitchen or dining room table, then surely you’ll be hounded by distractions. For some writers who live in apartments, that may be the only place they can write.

Try to find a secluded place within your home in which to do your work—even if you write on a laptop. Using a laptop makes the whole process more portable, so you may be tempted to carry it to another location in the house that’s perhaps not as quiet.

Write when others aren’t around. Do your writing in the morning or late evening when everyone else is asleep. Or do it during the day when your spouse is at work and your kids are in school. It’s amazing how much easier it is to concentrate without continual distractions.

Set up a writing corner in a room in your home. This could be in a house, condo, or apartment. By doing so, you’ll have a place you can return to every day. It also allows you to stop writing and pick up where you left off the next day without having to pack everything up because dinner needs to be on the table.

During the warmer months, depending on where you live, you may want to take your laptop outdoors and write on the patio or perhaps take a ride to a nearby park and write on a picnic table, as long as there aren’t crowds of people around. The sounds of nature are particularly soothing, and the fresh air will help stimulate your mind.

Above all, learn to control distractions. Turn off Email announcements. Put your phone on an answering machine or voice mail. Refrain from watching T.V. or listening to music while you work. Encourage friends to call in your off hours. Tell them when you’ll be working and ask them to avoid calling you during that time. And gather your family for a meeting and politely explain to them that when you’re working, they should respect that and do their best not to disturb you. Studies have shown that even though people multitask, it’s seldom successful and whatever they’re working on suffers.

Yes, silence is golden. But the soothing ticking of a clock, for instance, gives a rhythm to background noise that can be quite soothing. So sit back and write and listen to your furnace hum and your clock tick.                                               










                               

You Can Take It With You

As a busy day-job writer, you need to be ready to mix it up, to write on the go, to always have a draft or a research article or a final edit in your briefcase or under the seat of the car, or on your laptop, tablet, cell phone, or thumb drive.

Today’s technology makes it possible for you to take your writing with you.  Laptops, tablets, readers, and smart phones are all available.  But you may not own all of these devices, you most likely have one or two.  And even if you aren’t this electronically connected, you still have pen paper and perhaps a clipboard.

One of the most useful tools for today’s writers is a laptop.  Some use only a laptop computer.  Perhaps you live in a smaller apartment and don’t have space for full desktop setup.  While you can purchase a new laptop – preferably one with wireless—you can often find one for less that’s refurbished on a manufacturer’s web site.

The same applies to tablets.  While you may not have the keyboard flexibility of a laptop or desktop, nor the full word processing power, you can always purchase an optional add-on keyboard to help you jot down notes or make lists. Tablets and e-readers are better for reading overdrafts or for doing research—bookmarking web sites for later use.

Evernote, a program that allows you to save articles and whole web pages, as well as create to do and idea lists, as well as random notes, then access them on another of your devices at another time, is an excellent tool.

Even smart phones offer a way to access notes or to do pulmonary research while on the go.  With so many restaurants, cafes, and coffee shops offering free Wi-Fi, it makes sense to get plugged into today’s technology.

But while owning and using electronic devices is a start, you’ll have to get into a mobile mode if you expect to accomplish anything while on the go.

When you’re at your computer in your office, you have everything at hand—handwritten notes, printed out notes, lists, computer files—all at the ready. But when you’re on the go, you may not have all these things at your fingertips. To successfully work on the go, you have to prepare your work ahead of time.

Type up and print out your pages of notes. Save the files on your desktop but also save them to a thumb drive or directly on your laptop or tablet via a wireless connection. Also print out your notes. While some writers do all their work on their computers, it makes sense to have notes or drafts of articles, stories, or chapters of a book printed out so that you can mark or edit them with a colored pen.

Not all locations have Wi-Fi available. If you’re in a situation where there’s not electronic connection, then you can take out your printed notes and such for current projects, and continue working. But you have to prepare these beforehand.

One problem that can occur when working with a thumb drive is that you create or edit files on it but forget that the version on your main computer hasn’t been changes. Get in the habit of copying all the changed files onto the hard drive of your desktop or laptop at the end of each day or upon returning home if away for a length of time. If you’re using a laptop and a desktop, make sure that you save files to both in their most current form.

If you choose to read over drafts on your tablet or e-reader, don’t forget to delete them when you’re finished that project so that they don’t clog up the memory on your mobile device.

Another way of working while on the go is to use a service like GoToMyPC. With this service, for which you’ll have to pay a monthly fee, you can access the files on your desktop computer while working away from home on your laptop, tablet, or a third-party computer, such as those in a hotel business center.

Using your mobile devices will allow you to make better use of the incidental spots in your daily schedule—lunch hour, waiting for your kids to get out of sports practice, a half-hour between school drop-off and your morning commute, waiting in a doctor’s or dentist’s office, waiting to board your flight at an airport—when, given the right setup and equipment, you could easily fit in a solid session of writing or editing.

Smart To-Do Lists Get Things Done

To-do lists are great if they work. But just making a to-do list isn’t enough. You eventually have to act on it. Usually, these lists become a black hole into which everything you need to get done for your business, home, and life disappears. The result is that you end up doing nothing. But you do have that list. Isn’t that enough?

Creating a big long list starts to feel productive. It’s almost as if you’re actually getting started on a few of these items simply by acknowledging your need to do them. And finally, the act of writing a list can be so satisfying you don’t feel an immediate need to get started on the first item.

You’ve got a smart phone and a smart computer. Now it’s time to create a smart to-do list.

Keep it short. Can you accomplish two important tasks each day? A long to-do list of more than two pages can be intimidating. It’s actually better to have make several shorter lists. At first, you may think that all the items on your list have equal value, but that’s usually not the case. Limit your list to 10 items each week.

Prioritize the things you have to do. Put the important ones on your main list and the others on a secondary list. Often the items on this second list have no immediate deadline, so you can check them off as you have time to do them. If one or more of them becomes important, you can always add it to your main list.

Focus on what’s important first. Differentiate between productive tasks and satisfying time wasters.

When creating your list, use action words. Also, create a short command sentence for each item, not just a word or a phrase. For instance, “Research and write my writing blog for this week.”

Just as in your writing, you need to be as specific as possible when creating your to-do list. The more specific you can be, the better. Instead of “marketing,” write: “Identify five new markets for my articles and send queries to their editors.” The more specific you are, the more actionable your list will become. Once you know what you want to accomplish, it’s easy to make a to-do list of steps to get it done.

Use technology to create your list. You may prefer writing your list on a piece of paper. But with all the devices and special software programs at your disposal, you may want to consider trying something different. Take Evernote, for example. This neat application allows you to create notes, and, yes, a to-do list on any of several devices—desktop computer, laptop computer, cell phone, tablet—and then access them on all of the devices at any time.

Another great feature of Evernote is Evernote Web Clipper. With this application, you can save articles, links, and even full Web pages to read later. It’s better than a bookmark because you can only bookmark sites in a particular browser on an individual device. But with Evernote, your bookmarks or articles travel with you so that you can access them at any time.

The same applies to your to-do list. If you write your list on a piece of paper, you have to go into your office to read it and act on what’s listed. But with your list traveling with you, you can access it at any time and complete tasks using different devices, thus increasing productivity.

Of course, you can do much of what Evernote does on Google Calendar or on Yahoo. But saving notes, to-do lists, photos, Web pages, music, and more allows you to become more productive by making the best use of the time you have.

As you head into a freelance career, remember a large part of your success will depend on your ability to work through an ever-growing list of things to do. Creating a smart to-do list will help you prioritize what you have to do, so you get things done.

Going on a Writing Retreat

In today’s busy world, it’s often hard to focus on your writing. Distractions attack you from every angle—T.V.’s blaring, Internet flashing, cell phones ringing, kids screaming, spouse calling, and who knows what else. If you’re having a tough time getting any writing done, perhaps it’s time to take a break, not from writing but to writing. Perhaps it’s time for you to go on a writing retreat.

Retreats have long been used by religions to help their followers focus on their teachings and the spiritual side of their lives. Basically, to go on a retreat means to withdraw to a quiet and secluded place—away from the stress of everyday life, away from work, away from family.

Writing is difficult enough without all the distractions. And getting away from it all may just help you jump start that new novel, that short story you’ve been meaning to write, or that article that’s been nagging you to be written.

A writing retreat doesn’t have to be a big expensive affair. One writer gets together with other writer-friends of hers once a year at a one of their houses for a week of writing, eating, and sharing. They write during the day in separate areas of the house, taking a break only for lunch. In the evenings, they cook dinner together, talk about their writing, and what’s new in their lives. It’s all done in a relaxing atmosphere that results in stress reduction and more writing being done.

But the key in the above retreat is that the writer gathered with other writer-friends of hers. They all know each other and can help each other by sharing ideas and solving problems. However, in official, commercial writing retreats you’ll find by searching the Internet, you’ll be among writers you don’t know. As often as not, some of them will be very opinionated and want to impress the others about how good they are. This, in itself, creates stress, the very thing you’re trying to get away from.

Some commercial retreats offer a bare bones approach, offering a sparsely furnished room with shared bath and kitchen facilities. Others provide meals and a more luxurious atmosphere. Some require a minimum stay of two weeks. It all depends on how much you time and money you can afford to spend. But do you really need all that?

Most working writers—that is writers working 9-5 jobs—getting away for two weeks takes up all their vacation time. And if you have a family, getting away by yourself for two weeks is all but an impossibility. For most, getting away for two or three days, say over a weekend, is just the ticket. The advantage of shorter retreats is that you can do them more often.

To create your own retreat, find a vacation house, either one to rent or one belonging to a friend, that’s vacant for the time you need. The optimum word here is “vacation.” In order to keep costs down, rent it during the off season. A house at the beach is a great place for writing, especially before it gets to cold to take walks along the surf. Perhaps you can share the cost with another writer or two that you know. The same goes for a mountain cabin.

Another solution is to book a cheap hotel room with a mini fridge and perhaps a microwave. All you need is a desk and a power outlet. You can go out for dinner or get take out. Again, book in the off season. Many include breakfast. A bed and breakfast is another option. However, while these have charm and quiet, they’re usually more expensive than a hotel.

Don’t think that you have to work all the time while on your retreat. Sleep in once in a while or take an afternoon nap or a walk. Try not to work for more than two hours at a stretch. Refueling your body and mind will help your writing and make you more productive.

If you live alone and can’t get away, create a stay-at-home retreat. Plan to work at your writing throughout the day, perhaps in one-hour stints. Between each hour do something else—go for a walk, have lunch at a local diner or café, play with your dog. When you sit back down to write, you’ll find you’re refreshed and ready to continue.

If you can, vary your writing locations. If you have a laptop or tablet, you’ll be able to write just about anywhere. If the weather cooperates, take yourself outdoors and write on the patio or balcony. Take your laptop to a fast-food restaurant or doughnut shop and work while sipping some coffee or iced tea. Some places even have outdoor seating for warmer weather.

Above all, plan your home retreat ahead of time so that you won’t be distracted by sudden phone calls or other duties. And don’t forget to turn off your cell phone. If you’re not used to writing full time, then a retreat will show you how your routine needs to change should you ever wish to quit your job and become a freelance writer.