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.                                               










                               

Discipline Can Be a Good Thing

Discipline is all important to becoming a successful freelance writer—self-discipline, that is. No one will scold you for doing something wrong. You have no boss. You are the boss. So the only way you’ll get anything done is to make yourself tow the line.

To get ahead, you need to control the elements that might play havoc with your work schedule. To do this, you’ll need to anticipate problems and prepare ways to counteract them so your work won't suffer. The way to do this is to recognize patterns.

Keeping a daily or weekly journal for the first year or two of your freelance venture will help you see patterns developing. By writing down your progress—both the good and the bad things—you’ll begin to notice that they form patterns. Once you recognize the patterns, you’ll be able to take measures to break your bad ones and take advantage of your good ones.

Professional writers know all too well the pattern deadlines follow. Like trucks on a superhighway, they seem to travel in packs. It doesn't matter that you've planned them to arrive at intervals. They overtake each other and you if you don't remain vigilant.

Knowing this, professional writers build tricks into their planned writing time to minimize deadline crashes. The first step in this process is to create a Work-in-Progress chart or spreadsheet. For each project, create columns with the following headings (for non-fiction): Job Name, Publication, Query Written, Query Sent, Deadline, Research Completed, First Draft Completed, Revising Completed, Manuscript Sent, Date Sent, Payment Received, Date Received. If you write fiction, just change the headings accordingly. Then check off each item as you complete it for each project.

Let’s say you have three simultaneous deadlines. To avoid wasting time, do something for each job. Perhaps for Job No. 1 you’ll begin searching the Web for information on your topic. For Job No. 2, you’ll concentrate on interviews. And for Job No. 3, a relatively easy article, you’ll begin writing the first draft.

Professional writers follow this simple rule: As soon as you have a firm assignment to produce, take the first step immediately. By doing so, you’re on your way. The other steps follow without requiring anywhere near the effort of the first. In the case of writing a book, try starting with the easiest chapter first, no matter where it is in the book, then work on the others.

Once you've recognized patterns in your own working habits, you, too, will be able to do as the pros do. For example, you might devote your early mornings to the toughest writing chores because you know this is your most creative time. If you’re at your creative peak at some other time during the day, you should adjust your work schedule accordingly. During this time, you shouldn’t allow anything or anyone to interrupt you. With the heavy-duty work out of the way, you can devote your afternoon hours to making necessary phone calls, trips to the library, online research, or bookkeeping.

Another trick to help your self-discipline is to set a timer or alarm clock as you approach your chores. Break the job, whether it's actually writing the text, revising and editing, or diving into a pile of accumulated research, into reasonable segments, then set your timer and work against it. You'll be amazed at how much you you’ll be able to accomplish with the clock ticking away.

Yet another way to keep the work flowing is to create a daily or weekly to-do list. As you complete each chore, cross it off. At the end of the day or week, you’ll be surprised at how much you’ll get done.

Or you could compare your output with that of a more successful writer. Keep track of how often his or her byline appears not just in the markets where you'd expect to find it, but elsewhere, too. Is this writer getting into a new and promising field? Perhaps it’s time for you to consider opening up new horizons for yourself?

Also consider enlisting the help of a close friend. Tell your friend about a particularly ambitious project you're thinking about starting. Explain you're really taking a chance and that you may need reminding, now and then, about how you’re doing. If you’re friend asks “How’s that book idea you told me about coming along,” you’ll have to answer honestly or feel guilty afterwards. Be sure to choose a friend that’s action oriented, otherwise you may find yourself just talking about your plans instead of carrying them out.

All writers have ways of tricking themselves into the proper mental and emotional state for high production. Some people require the wolf to be knocking at their door, others just the opposite.
How you discipline yourself to juggle your time and work load may work fine for a while, then suddenly you find what you had been doing is no longer adequate. Your bank balance will immediately register deficiencies in your methods of discipline. Once that happens you'll have to do some fast shuffling of priorities and techniques to keep from going under. Be flexible, but remember that patterns lead to other patterns. And discipline rules.