Focus is my January word. My daughter taught me about the "flow state." When I think about the work of writing and editing, I think about two kinds of focus: There is the necessity to just focus on one thing, the task at hand. For that, I use one of the tomato timer apps, that tells me to just hunker down for 25 minutes. It’s so hard to stay focused with email notifications, kids around, and the 300 tabs on my browser. Not to mention the coup taking place. But 25 minutes is always just enough time…. The other focus thing that I think about comes in the editing phase. When I edit writing, I look for a theme. A clothesline onto which all the sentences and paragraphs hang. In fiction, this is a plot point. In non-fiction, it is an argument. As I edit, I find myself cutting out asides, paragraphs that take us backward instead of forward, or things that water down the point.
This blog was written by Jessica.
I love this. It is so hard to see sometimes that additions and embellishment can often bog down the writing