Regaining Focus

Topic of the Night: Regaining Focus

Last night I talked about focus, how times and outside events sometimes cause us to lose focus in our writing.

How do you get the focus back on writing besides the simple answer “Slowly?” That answer helps no one, really.

So let me give a few ideas on how to regain focus, or at least how I have done it at times. How I have brought back up writing on my priority list over the years when the world is tossing in far too many things.

Look at Overall Goals

Sometimes losing focus can be not only caused by other things in life taking priority, but also by each of us losing a focus on what is important with our own writing.

When the goal fades, the importance of your writing fades back down the priority list as well. Just natural. It starts feeling like “Why bother?”

So step back and take a hard look at your overall goals, see if they still fit what you are doing. If not, change them to goals that do fit. This might take some time. Give it the time.

Success Can Cause a Lack of Focus

Strangely enough, with writing, accomplishing a major goal or reaching some milepost can really cause you to lose the focus on the writing. It should work the other way around, but it doesn’t most times.

This has stopped me cold and made me lose focus numbers of times over the decades.

How to get past this is to again step back, acknowledge what you have accomplished, and reset another goal or milepost. And then focus on that new goal. That will bring up the focus on your writing and bring your writing back up your priority list.

Lack of Success Can Hurt As Well

This one makes more sense than most, but isn’t often the cause of a lack of focus. Most writers I know don’t give up easily on dreams of writing.

But when sales are down or under your made-up expectations, the focus can get pulled into other places trying to fix the sales. And they can’t be fixed without writing.

But just when the writer needs to really jump to more writing, the focus of lack of sales makes the writing almost impossible.

I usually don’t much care about how my books sell. But at times this creeps in and when I hear myself say something along these lines I try to smash it down at once. So listen to what comes out of your mouth to spot this problem.

A ton easier said than done.

Your Goals Force You Away From Writing

Wow, have I seen this a great deal. Especially with writers who start making some money with their writing or who go freelance with their writing. Suddenly everything in the business world, in the marketing, in the production, feels more important than the writing.

Notice I said “feels” which means the priority list has shifted.

In fact, the focus on the writing often drops so far down the ladder of priority that it is an afterthought. Even though the writing is the center of the business. The other stuff just “feels” more important and is more controllable in theory. So it gets done first, leaving little or no time to write.

This becomes a death spiral, actually, for writers, since the more the money goes down because of lack of writing focus, the more the writer will focus on external things like more promotion and so on to try to fix it. Scary but true and I’ve seen it over and over.

And yeah, you folks over the last three years have watched me try to balance this as we have built WMG Publishing into a solid, mid-sized publishing company with many employees. Sometimes I have lost that balance. Mostly I have won.

Over the last month I have lost, but I will regain the focus on the writing again soon, meaning in the next few days.

Health Issues

The sudden focus to a health issue or a family member or close friend health issue can cause writing focus to vanish instantly. And that’s logical.

The key in times of health issues is to keep your writing a fun, safe place to play. And take all pressure off your writing instantly. Guilt around not-writing might be a motivator in normal times, but it is deadly around health issues.

Take the pressure off and make the writing important again as the health issues clear.

I had to do this when my friend Bill died suddenly. I spent almost nine months not writing because my focus was on clearing up his estate and recovering from that. But when the time was right, I came back to writing. But it took some months to get back.

Summary

Those are just a few of the things to try to help you regain focus when the writing suddenly seems to not be so important.

Sadly, I have seen far more writers than I want to think about lose focus, put writing way down the priority list, and never recover. Take this problem as a serious problem, no matter the cause.

And keep the writing fun. Make it a place to escape from the other things. That also will help you give it more focus because it is fun.

And we all like having fun.

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