Taking Care of Business - Ciaran Murtagh

People always think it must be brilliant working from home, and as I sit in my freezing shed with frost on the inside of the windows waiting for the heater to come out of hibernation long enough to stop my breath steaming, I have to agree.

Sure it has it's problems, like wondering if you're going to make enough money  to justify turning on the heaters in the first place, but it also has lots of benefits. You're your own boss. You can work when you like and you can fit working hours around other things you might need to do in the day, like picking fluff out of your belly button, nursing that Bargain Hunt addiction and wondering what you're going to wear for dress down Friday, even though every day is technically dress down Friday. Truth be told, I sometimes have a 'can't be bothered to get dressed at all' Thursday...

But work does still need to be done. You can't just sit in your shed inhaling the sweet fumes of your a-ha themed scented candle (true fact) and dream of being JK. So how can you make a success of working from home? As Elvis said - you gotta Take Care of Business.

1) Routine

There is something about a commute to work that gets you out of home space and into work space. I'm not saying I want to sit on an overcrowded, overpriced train in order to be more effective, but I find I have to do something. When your commute is literally 'walk to the shed' or in previous incarnations 'walk to the spare room' then there's little time to transition.

This morning I've got myself up (big tick there), got two kids up, dispatched them to two different schools and nurseries, did the bins, tidied bedrooms and now it's time to work. Trouble is I don't really feel like it. I need to do something to kick myself into gear.  For me it's a blast at the gym, for you it might be a walk, a swim, reading the paper, something that kicks you into a different place. It may seem like you're wasting your time - the kids'll be back before you know it, there's stuff to be done. But as Billy Bragg said:

'I know it looks like I'm just reading the paper, 

but these ideas I'll turn to gold dust later

'Cause I'm a writer not a decorator...' 

2) Planning

I like to know what I'm doing in a day. Some people like to plan the night before, that's never been my bag. It's also impossible sometimes. I have book deadlines that might be a month or two in advance, I have TV deadlines which are literally 'by lunchtime' and I have the joys of working with Australia and the US who work through the night to give me work I didn't know existed in the morning.

Regardless, each morning I try and make a plan for myself. It doesn't have to be colour coded and covered in sticky notes, literally a numbered list - I am going to do these things in this order and then I'm going to stop, unless Australia wakes up early. It gives my day structure, and while it might not go according to plan, at least I know what I'm diverting from so I can come back to it in due course.

3) Breaks

Take breaks. You are not a loser for taking breaks. Procrastinating is not the same as taking a break. Recognise when you've hit a wall. I can spend an hour staring at a screen getting nowhere, I go and make a cup of tea and the thing clicks into place like a magic eye puzzle (ask your parents). Breaks are important.

4) Writing is not the only work

My job is a writer, therefore you might think the only time I'm doing my job properly is when I'm putting words on a page. It's not true. We're not coal miners, we're not paid by the tonne. Research is work. Answering emails is work. Sorting out your receipts is work. Invoicing is work. Sometimes - and don't tell my wife - sitting in a bath with a notepad and pen at two in the afternoon, is work. Don't beat yourself up too much about targets and word counts. If you are doing something that contributes to making the core business of what you do easier and more successful, you are working.

5) Don't eat the biscuit

That is literally it. In an office, you eat all the biscuits people judge you. When you're your own boss you can eat all the biscuits, go out and buy a new packet so nobody knows, eat them too and then only get blamed for eating one packet of biscuits. That has never EVER happened by the way.

What I mean is, fight your urges and your temptations. There are lots of things you could be doing and no one is going to know if you do them instead of work apart from yourself. Know what your distractions are and try and break the habit of going to them. You'll get more done, and in my case, stay slimmer.

That's it. Merry Christmas. Keep on trucking and may all your notebook pages be white.

A Compelling Idea? Lari Don

I am driven to write by questions – most of my books start with What If? and are powered by a constant stream of What Happens Next? So I carry bits of paper or notebooks with me all the time, everywhere, just in case a question pops into my head.

I usually welcome these questions, even when they arrive at inconvenient times and especially when they send stories in unexpected and challenging directions.

However, very occasionally, I resist these questions. The What If? that prompted my teen thriller Mind Blind arrived unexpectedly and inconveniently. So I scribbled it down, then pushed it to the back of my mind because I didn’t think I had the time, the skills or the desire to do it justice. But it kept pushing forward and demanding to be written, bringing a longer and more enticing line of What Happens Next? questions every time it reappeared. Eventually I gave in and started writing, and I’m really glad I did.

But I had an odd experience earlier this week. I was eating my breakfast and reading a wildlife magazine (I’m writing about hares, crows and toads at the moment, but my eyes sometimes slide off the domestic wildlife articles onto the bigger beasts like lions and tigers and bears...) And while I was reading an article about giraffes, I had a sudden What If?’ idea.

I considered the question for a moment. Then I realised that the story it was leading to was dystopian, sci fi, YA and dark. I don’t mind dark, I’m keen to write more YA, and I suppose you could class Mind Blind as sci fi, but I really really don’t want to write a dystopian book. We’ve already given every possible future world quite enough of those...

So I shrugged, turned the page in the magazine and took another spoonful of muesli. But the question, the thought, the idea, the story, wouldn’t go away. I could feel it. Rattling about in my head. Itching in my fingers. I couldn’t eat any more. I couldn’t concentrate on the next page. I had to write the idea down. I didn’t want to write the book but I felt compelled to scribble down the idea. I had to acknowledge the existence of the question, even if I never intended to answer it.

So I got my ideas notebook and I scribbled the question down. And suddenly all was well with the world. The question had moved from my head to my notebook, and even though I am 99% sure I will never follow it up, I had at least written it down.

But that felt a bit weird. As if I was being compelled, by an idea I didn’t even like, to write it down. To give it houseroom in my creative space.

My notebook is filled with questions and ideas for more books (books I do want to write!) than I will ever have time to write, so I suppose there is no harm in a book I don’t want to write sitting quietly in there.

But it was extremely odd sensation, that compulsion to give this question, this idea, this potential story, its moment. Even though I know I would never follow it through, I nevertheless had to write it down, just as I would with an idea I was excited about.

What was going on there?

Was it a worry that if I didn’t give this What If? question respect, I might block the flow of other (more useful) questions? I’m not a superstitious person, so I don’t think so.

Or was it a process thing, instead? This is what always happens: I have an idea, I write it down. So, when I have an idea, that’s just what I automatically need to do with it. Hmm. I don’t like admitting that I’m such a creature of habit.

But it’s probably better than believing that ideas have an independent and autonomous life of their own! Which could of course, lead to a potentially dark and dystopian future... (I’d better go and scribble that down...)

Lari Don is the award-winning author of more than 20 books for all ages, including a teen thriller, fantasy novels for 8 – 12s, picture books, retellings of traditional tales and novellas for reluctant readers. 

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Bird by Bird - Heather Dyer

 

© nao-cha

“Bird by bird, son,” says Mr. Lamott, when his son is overwhelmed by a school project on birds and doesn’t know where to begin: “Just take it bird by bird.”

'Bird by bird,' is also what I tell myself when I’m facing the immensity of writing a new book. Often a new creative endeavour is a journey into the unknown. We advance paragraph by paragraph, scene by scene – often without being entirely sure where we’re headed. We keep our heads down, measuring our progress word by word.

But sometimes it's helpful to measure our progress not by word count, but by time spent writing. Therefore, 'bird by bird' could also mean ‘moment by moment’.

In October, Nicola Morgan set up an October ‘NanoWrimo’ (Novel Writing Group) for authors in the Scattered Authors’ Society. All those who signed up agreed to declare our writing goals at the beginning of the month and encourage each other to keep on track daily via Facebook.

I signed up for the group to help motivate myself to write. But I didn’t declare a daily word count. My goal was simply to open one of my two writing projects – one fiction, one non-fiction – and work on it for an unspecified time first thing every morning. Only after this could I start my other work: editorial report writing, lesson planning, admin, errands…

I used to clear the decks of all this 'other stuff' before tackling my creative writing. But last year other work built up to such an extent that the decks were never clear. I ended up batting off one ‘urgent’ task after another, just to keep up. If I did get to pause I found myself panting and out of breath – not a conducive state of mind for creativity. I realized one day that it had been nearly a year since I’d properly given some attention to the sort of writing that all my other work was meant to support.

And what did I discover during the October Wrimo? I discovered that even fiddling ineffectually with my writing projects tended to produce at least a sentence or an idea that I could build on the following day.

Also, dipping into the worlds of my books – even for just half an hour – allowed these worlds to develop bit by bit in my unconscious. Then, in quiet or preoccupied moments (like walking to work or showering or meditating) lines of dialogue or new ideas tended to arise in my consciousness like bubbles in a pot of porridge on a low heat.

Bird by bird my projects grew, so that at the end of the week I was undeniably further on than I had been at the beginning.

But best of all, I no longer felt the guilt associated with not having been 'creative’. It was only once this guilt was lifted that I realized that I had been struggling to work through a low-level stress caused by the knowledge that I had neglected something that was important but not shouting for attention; something hovering in the background, waiting. I found that by attending to my creative work first, this stress disappeared.

And in the end, I still got as much 'other' work done. If anything, I became more efficient, more patient,  and worked with a greater focus – because I have already satisfied that ‘thing’ hovering in the background.

This way of working is not new to me – in fact, I advise all my students to try working this way. But somehow I had let my priorities slide. The October NanoWrimo group prompted me to remember my priorities. I feel better for it – and so does my writing.

 “Bird by bird,” is the title of Anne Lamott’s book about writing and about being a writer.

Heather Dyer's latest book is The Flying Bedroom.
www.heatherdyer.co.uk