One of the ongoing topics I’ve talked to writers about over the years is whether organization is helpful or harmful to writers. I don’t think there’s a simple, cookie-cutter answer to this question, but I do think that the romantic image of the freewheeling, mad writer who lets his mind (and it’s usually his) roam free while everyone else just picks up the pieces around him hasn’t necessarily been the most productive in terms of writing’s practicalities.
The fact is that a lot of those images come from a time when writers (like Henry James or Virginia Woolf) people were rich enough to have servants attending to their mundane needs, or when “brilliant” artists were able to get friends or wives to cater to their whims. For so many of us, writing entails not just harnessing our creativity but coping with the world’s challenges so we have the time and space to be creative. More than ever, we have worldly responsibilities and distractions all around us that make it hard to write, which is why I personally err on the side of organization.
Being organized, not being anxious that I’m dropping the ball with an email or a task, not spending too much time on the Internet, helps me as a writer because it frees me up psychologically to write. In the classic writer’s companion Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott asks writers to do this thought experiment where they imagine all the people they have obligations toward as mice that they put in a jar while they’re writing, which they then take out when they’re done. That’s all fine and good, but rather than think of people I’m obligated to as mice, I focus on the obligations themselves and think of them more like ants that are trying to creep into my house of creativity. What I do is either squish them as soon as I can or I build a pool of water around myself so they can’t reach me (I did this when I was a kid; put sweets on a saucer with water so the ants won’t get to them!).
This is the first of a series of entries that focus on organization for writers, dealing with issues such as task management, email management (yes, you too can get to Inbox 0), writing workflow, and methods for keeping Internet distraction at bay. Hopefully by the end of the series, you’ll not only be a more efficient writer but a better one, because you’re not nearly as distracted by the world outside of what you’re working on.