Four of my top five strengths are strategic thinking ones – Context, Strategic, Input, Intellection – which explains why for as long as I can remember my mind has never been quiet. I come up with ideas like other people turn on the tap. I spot rafts of possible solutions to everybody else’s problems. And I always have far too many things on the go at once.
The results are—unsurprisingly—exhaustion, unfinished thoughts, unfinished projects, and the continued discontent with the things I produce, because the perfectionist lurking in the back of my mind wants everything just so.
Just before the pandemic hit, I started to work on my strengths, hoping to find ways to use them better. First, to reduce the overwhelm, then to help me write stories that came closer to the vision in my mind, then to become more efficient as a writer.
Five years later, I’m still at it, and I’ve gained a better understanding of myself.
I now know why I struggle to write conflicts and dislike my characters arguing.
I know why it can take me ages to get down to actually writing even though I’m poised on the brink of a flood of words.
I know what to do when three new plot bunnies arrive when I’m close to finishing a story.
And I’ve accepted that write every day and don’t edit as you write are not recommendations that will ever work for me given the way I’m wired.
While I’m still in the process of decluttering my mind and my process, I’ve started experimenting with what I’ve learned.
I’ve always known that walking helps to get the words flowing. One of the reasons is that intellection, the strength that makes sense of things, needs quiet uninterrupted time to mull things over.
Walking across a field or up a hill has few distractions. My mind has the space and peace to consider character motivations and dialogue and produce the words when the pattern fits. When – on the other hand – I sit in front of the computer at home and the words take their time arriving, it’s very easy to just quickly check email, or social media, or read the news. By the time I come back to my manuscript, my brain has switched from intellection to input, has soaked up new information and is busy processing that, instead of thinking about the scene I was working on.
So since I already know that staring at a screen often produce nothing but frustration, and since I already know that going out for a walk often produces the words I want – what is stopping me from combining the two and go for a walk first thing in the morning, getting the words down?
If I had to guess, I’d say it’s good, old inertia at work. The negative self talk kind that has an excuse for everything. The part of me that I really want gone because it’s holding me back when I don’t want it to.
And since, during lockdown, I wrote a whole novel while on my daily walks, there’s no reason for inertia to talk me out of it. I’ve already proven it works. So my next challenge is to make it work again, on purpose this time
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