WWN44 : Be bored to be brilliant

A long, long time ago, in a newsletter close to here I wrote a piece called “32 Writing Rules”.

I did say back then that each of those rules could really do with it’s own piece, and I followed it up with one on adverbs the next week, but then I never expanded on the others.

Today I was puffing a pipe in my blustery backyard and pondering potential topics for today when I remembered that post.

Rules 8 and 9 immediately jumped out at me.

So then.

…let’s talk the Writer’s Greatest Friend.

Being stone-cold BORED out your skull.

The reason that those two rules jumped out me is because yesterday, I recorded and sent out my video workshop Curing the Deadline Disease to all the lucky buyers.

(It’s gone now, no longer available.)

But one of the things that I touched on during one of the exercises in there was the power of putting a time limit on your task…

…in the opposite way to what most people do.

Most folks tell you to set a time to get done by and then you’ll type away faster and you’ll get there. That also is a powerful exercise.

It’s one of the 21 Speed Daemon Secrets, although I have some important nuances to add there as well. More on that for those that are buyers soon as I update, improve and relaunch the course at a higher price.

But, to get back on track, it’s not always the right play.

Sometimes, you need to set a minimum time limit. And I don’t mean in the sense of author and alleged sex pest Neil Gaiman’s advice to sit in a room and wait until you start writing out of boredom.

I mean you have to say “I will NOT stop working on this thing until two hours have passed, even if I think I’m done.”

No distractions. Just boredom. Just sitting there, thinking about the thing until your time is up.

You will be amazed, dear reader, how often you’ll think you’re done. You’ll think you’ve come up with every possible idea on whatever topic you’re working on…

…and then you’ll force yourself to sit there for another hour and suddenly you’ll think of something new…

…35 minutes in!

The fact is that we swim in a sea of stimulation. We have podcasts on in the background while we do the dishes. We watch TV in the evenings. We listen to music while working out. We listen to audiobooks on walks at 2x speed. We browse our Twitter on the toilet. We check the stock market when it’s going down the toilet. We read books half-heartedly while we think about the stock market going down the toilet. We watch YouTube at 1.5x speed while we’re “writing”.

It’s a never-ending stream of information.

But your brain can’t process it that fast. When you constantly flood new entertainment in, all you can do is sort it into basic categories of good, bad and okay. It’s in fight or flight mode, thinking “is this a threat?” the whole time instead of slowing down and taking it in.

To make serious connections, to think things through, you need to create space.

Space with the right inputs.

Spend twenty minutes thinking about a topic and you’ve just scraped together the surface concepts. Let it sit for another twenty while you stare grumpily at it, puffing your pipe vigorously and all of a sudden you start to see things that weren’t there before.

Then you’ll furiously type for a while to get it all down and you’ll run out of ideas again.

At which point you just rinse and repeat!

Look, I’ve had this happen so many times. Normally, with something like a hymn that requires a lot of careful thought going into every word that ends up in the finished piece.

If I open up one of the 47 “in-progress” hymns sitting in my Notion hymn file, I can look at it for ten minutes and think “nah, I’ve got nothing. No way I’ll ever figure out how to pull these notes together into a coherent poetical form.”

But when I embrace the boredom? When I eliminate the distractions?

When I just suck it up and stare at the file for an hour regardless of whether it’s “working” or not?

Suddenly connections start forming, ideas start flowing, and something that I’ve been stuck on for months comes together in minutes. Its almost like you

ascend to a higher level!

So let me encourage you to set aside time to be bored. Set a minimum time you’re going to work on your project today regardless of whether you’re making progress or not. Reject CAW-CAW “efficiency” metrics and embrace the suck.

Sit down and stare.

Then write when you’re ready.

Until next week, may your pipe accompany many extended attempts at thinking through things and alleviate much boredom,

James Carran, Craftsman Writer

fin

P.s. My Speed Daemon Secrets will help you write a lot faster when the ideas are flowing - thus opening up a lot more time to be bored and let your thoughts develop.

Snap them up here. I plan to redesign and relaunch the course later this year at a much higher price but existing buyers will be grandfathered into all upgrades.