Recently I took a friend to the Salton Sea. We were on a very tight schedule, and as this friend from Ohio had never been to the Salton Sea but knew of my love for it, she came with me on a one day visit. the driving time alone was to be seven hours. The most we could hope to stay and be back at Disneyland for an evening meeting, was three hours. She wanted to see Salvation Mountain, the volcanic mud pots were on the way, as were many other austere scenic opportunities along the way. We never made it to Salvation Mountain. And barely made it back to Disneyland. How important was it for her to go to Salvation Mountain? I don’t know. Will it make a difference to her and her God? I doubt it. But! If she really wanted to go or had to go – then she could have done so if she’d made a plan and schedule to make it out there.
Of course, flying by the seat of the pants is always good – and this cheap analogy is only meant to segue into what it takes to be productive in writing, and not – necessarily, what it takes to be organized in life.
One of the magical things you can do to move the work along, is to have an idea of where you’re going. I mentioned that I will be opening files soon, both in the computer and physically with a file folder, to help facilitate ease of writing production. This is easier to do when you know where you’re going (!) but it does a number of things as well.
1) Defines the road you’re going on. Often times in writing and planning we have a pretty good idea of where we want to go. The problem comes in when we get sidetracked. Being side-traced at the Salton Sea was a lot of fun. The mud pots are an amazing phenomena. But we did not reach Salvation Mountain – God save our souls!
2) Offers insights into greater opportunities. All that silliness aside about not going to Salvation Mountain – we did have a plan: Go to Salvation Mountain. Okay, good. Then we got in the car and left for the mountain. As it turns out we were able to find other things along the way. if we had not made the plan (opened the file) to go to Salvation Mountain, then we wouldn’t have passed other photo ops, and mud pots, etc. In other words, there were things worth watching along the way.
Opening a file early can occasionally reveal other opportunities ahead of time. I still had a year to go when I opened all the class files for my Bachelor’s degree. By doing so, I was able to see what was ahead of me and how it related to earlier classes and later classes – the end result was my mind was now operating on more than a “here and now” mentality with my courses – I could, in effect, see into the future and take advantages of information that impressed my instructors/students and I had greater control over the facts.
3) Makes it easier to just get started. Often times after studies and projects and writing 2K, it’s difficult to switch mental gears and move forward on a new or old project. having the files prepared (even if they’re empty) is usually enough to get the snowball rolling. It really can be that simple sometimes. There’s an empty file – but it is something! You’ve made a contract with yourself to put something into that file and it’s a lot easier to get something in there if there is indeed a file open.
I’ll even go further that than, if I can. Why not start a word file to go into the empty file?
Why not title the word file with something that might have something to do with the project at hand.
These kinds of personal prompts keep the subconscious mind ruminating behind the scenes so when you return to them later you could have days, weeks, or months of subconscious activity available to your hands and mind by the time you get to work on them. They allow you to incubate and execute when it’s time to get to work – no small gift, I assure you!
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