In Defense of Creative Wandering
I have a vaguely embarrassing confession: I’ve been writing 10 books concurrently for the past five years.
None of them is finished.
Nor do I have any idea when they will be, though I sense I’m about two-thirds of the way through the first draft for the majority of them.
In my defense: I am actively working on all of them, and they hew to a linked constellation of evergreen topics close to my heart (writing, editing, and the creative process).
If asked, I’d say the writing is going well, and I am excited about what I’m creating. The writing is good, and even inspired in some moments. At least, it’s as good as anything else I’ve ever written.
However, as an editor and sometime writing coach, I cannot endorse this scatterbrained approach to longform writing to anybody, because it is certifiably insane and probably appallingly inefficient.
Yet it’s how my writing process is playing out.
It’s how my process has *always* played out, really, for works both short and long. I call the approach Many Irons, Many Fires, which is a literary way of implying that it is: Rambling, peripatetic, pocked by constant interruptions and endless (and endlessly entertaining) diversions, plus a chronic nagging worry that I am making things way harder on myself than they need to be.
Why am I like this?
On a neurobiological level, I suspect I have an undiagnosed case of inattentive ADHD, which I’ve managed to mask with really super-good workarounds.
I’m neurotic about deadlines and constantly check my own progress.
I write EVERYTHING down because if I don’t, it literally didn’t (and won’t) happen.
And I’m a secret perfectionist, unwilling to let a piece of writing go until it feels absolutely, positively done, regardless of how long it ends up taking or how many tears I must shed.
I’d argue that this approach to creativity has both concrete and philosophical compensations.
A short attention span means you have time to pay attention to more things. Many more!
It means you can write-vacuum-email-scroll-think-text-eat-brainstorm-research-network all at once!
People love to remind you that NOBODY is actually a good multitasker, and that claiming to be good at it is just a thing people say to excuse their unacceptably neurodivergent approach to getting life and art done.
Bullocks!
Is each of the books I’m trying to write fully worthy of undivided intelligence? Sure. But that’s now how my brain is built.
Could I get more done faster by tackling one book at a time in systematic order? Perhaps. But I’ve tried the linear approach to life and creativity and it always ends up with me feeling enormously frustrated as opposed to my usual default setting of vaguely harried, and that is no improvement, if you ask me. Outlines just aren’t for everyone.
I ask: What’s so bad about taking the long and looping way home? It gets you there just the same, and you make plenty of unexpected discoveries along the way. This route is more frenetic, but also more fun, and ultimately, you might be powerless to modify your route without sacrificing something essential.
If you are a many-irons-and-many-fires person like me, I’d encourage you to join me in experimenting with radical acceptance when it comes to evaluating the way we get our work done. It’s radical because we live in an era of relentless retooling and are told, over and over, that if a thing is not efficient, it is flawed and wasteful and in desperate need of an overhaul.
This is simply untrue.
Rather than chastise ourselves for our inability to focus deeply on just one thing at a time, and rather than putting it down to a failure of character or imagination, let’s cultivate a little more self-acceptance and open ourselves up to the surprising and variegated gifts of a shorter attention span.
On that note, I reallllly gotta go now.
No joke, I sat down at my computer 30 minutes ago intending to send an email, and whaddya know, I wrote this instead.
The day grows late, and so many tasks remain unfinished, and yet I am not sorry I did things this way.
I am never sorry to have done things this way.
