When you work the french fry machine for a living, the occasional tap on the shoulder is considered an acceptable encounter within a normal work environment. You deal with these interruptions as they come up, then get back to work cranking out your process-mandated 1,800 perfectly-golden sliced potato slices per hour. One fry every two seconds. No more, no less.
(By the way, the "you" to which I refer is clearly a rhetorical one. Didn't want y'all to think I was deliberately stigmatizing you.)
Given the relatively low level of complexity related to your current activity - remove fries from freezer, dump into bin, place bin in boiling, artery-clogging oil, set alarm, remove assembly when alarm goes off, dump into catch basin, fill cardboard boxes - you hardly have to get into the right mindset to maintain a given output velocity of the deadly confection.
Writing presents a whole new challenge. I write because I was likely struck by lightning very early in life. My brain has its creative and not-so-creative moments. It takes time and energy to get into a state where the words just flow through my fingertips and into my keyboard. Writing speed, quality, and the elusive groove that drives them both are far from binary, on-off propositions. One doesn't simply pick up where one left off. Not so easily, anyway.
A just-a-minute tap on the shoulder or a ringing phone doesn't just stop my progress for the 10 seconds it takes to take care of whatever it is that's so seemingly important. It yanks me out of that creative zone and forces me to once again force my head back into that space that I was in before I was so abruptly interrupted.
This process can take a while. Some creative types say a 15-minute lag is typical. Worse for me, if I had a slew of words in my head just before the ringer went off, I will very likely lose them to the ether as a result of the stoppage.
Writers and other creators seem to get this. Non-creative types generally do not.
I don't mean to sound arrogant or perjorative. We do, after all, have kids. Three of 'em. And when you're four years-old, Daddy's writing idiosyncracies don't matter a whole lot to you when all you want is for someone to get you a cup of milk and take out your Lego set.
But intentional or not, trying to write one cohesive piece, or shape an existing one to a razor's edge before a deadline, is virtually impossible when the world buzzes around you and more often than not bumps right into you as well.
To counter the effects of our interrupt-driven world, I've gotten into the rather non-sustaintable habit of pushing my bedtime back to a sometimes-ridiculous hour. I write when it's way past any sane person's bedtime because it's the only continuously clear stretch of absolutely silent time in my otherwise-crammed-with-activity day.
Tonight is just such a night. What started out as a quick check of tomorrow morning's weather forecast in advance of tomorrow morning's bike ride turned into a dimly-lit writing session when my head decided now was a good time to finish off my next column. I ended up editing a mostly-written piece, and it turned out better than I expected. I'm a psychotic perfectionist when I write, often playing with multiple iterations of particular words, phrases or other constructs until I'm beyond happy that I've achieved an ideal sense of balance and flow.
I always know I'll pay for it the next day thanks to the inevitably abbreviated sleep period. But that's a tradeoff I'm willing to make if it means pushing a published piece from good to great.
Some nights, I'll completely ignore the clock and end up writing until the birds start singing just before dawn. Those are the days I lay on an extra mug or two of full-strength tea to keep me going. That this is normal by now is a pretty ridiculous comment on how I've evolved the writing processes that sustain and advance me.
But it works. And as long as I keep moving the literary bar forward, I'll continue to shave as much shuteye out of my life as I can possibly manage.
And with that, I'll hit Publish before hitting the hay. 'Night all.
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2 comments:
I'm not a professional writer like you, but I do know what you mean about the effect kids can have on your concentration!
That said, I think you did a good post all the same :)
Aha! So now I know that all those shaving accidents you used to have were caused by temporary bouts of delerium due to lack of sleep! Mmmmm....fries!
I hear you about the distractions. "Do you have a minute?" makes me want to scream! Since I've been working here, I've developed the dubious talent of ignoring everything that goes on around me through sheer necessity. That can be dangerous when you start to do it in everyday life, like on the 401. I've started looking for other employers to torture me.
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