Your New Creative Superpower
by Elizabeth Solar
This summer, we celebrate Wonder Woman. Sisters of the world, and many of our brothers, stand in solidarity for female empowerment, truth, beauty, and gettin’ things done.
This woman wonders: how am I going to squeeze multiple visits to the Apple store, redesign my studio, market my business, and revise my book, when there are so many summer cocktails to pin, and countless photos to love of @JifPom, the hardest working Pomeranian on Instagram?
Most of us have cultivated the superpower of multi-tasking, a ‘talent’ I honed as a parent. Multi-tasking is virtually written into the Mom Manifesto. For years I prided myself in the ability to drive in opposite directions through drive time traffic for drop-offs and pick-ups to various sports practices, games, music lessons and doctors appointments, while I planned dinner, conferenced with clients and assembled so-called simple-to- construct TV consoles from Amazon.
Even at my master level multi-tasker status, I seem to accomplish little. The dark side of multi-tasking, especially if you are a creative, often results in a lack of focus, or unless a giant deadline looms, motivation. In short, our superpower’s underbelly is lined with kryptonite.
Summer presents even more challenge, as the beach beckons. We travel more often. There are barbeques on the patio, and cocktails on the deck. Visits to all the friends we haven’t seen between September and May. What’s a mere mortal to do?
Try mono tasking, or the art of doing one thing at a time. It sounds heretic to us coffee-swilling overachievers, but it works. When we focus our intention, attention and energy into one endeavor, we’re more likely to accomplish a goal. Ask any elite athlete, world-class musician, or published author.
First, set a writing goal. Some of us prefer to work in pages per sitting. Others, a time limit/minimum. Many great novels were written in short inspired spurts. If you’re pressed for time, aim for 20 minutes a day. If you can commit to just 20 minutes a day, you’ll often discover you run over time. Soon, you’ve written a few pages. Now, that wasn’t so bad!
A few more tips:
Settle into your happy writing space. Maybe it’s a coffee shop. Or your kitchen table. Or under a shady tree. Wherever you can get it done, go there.
Write by hand. A cute little leather-bound journal, or a yellow legal pad and your favorite pen. No Internet, populated by adorable puppies or political rants to tempt you. If you must bring your computer…
Put the Internet on hold. Download any number of free apps that you can set to close down the World Wide Web, so you can write. A few you can try are Freedom, JDarkroom or Self-Control, which features skull and crossbones to illustrate the dire consequences of not keeping on task.
Turn off your cell phone, or better yet, leave it behind.
Listen to music, or ambient sounds. Sometimes I put together soundtracks that remind me of certain characters or situations to keep me in the mood of my story.
Clear your mental space. Whatever rituals you use to start you day, (yoga, a swim, a run) or get you motivated, or if you have other deadlines hovering over you, get them done before hand. Too much mind chatter/clutter will pull you away from the task at hand: finishing that story.
Ride in your own lane. We start to look at what everyone else is doing, and bemoan our own lack of progress. Which can lead you into the rabbit hole of your own self-sabotage. You know that expression “Compare, and despair?’ It’s a thing. Don’t do it.
Bask in the glow of accomplishment and your newfound superpower: Mono-tasking. Who needs invincibility bracelets?
