Hello! How do you do?

This my the eleventh post. Now, according to the arbitrary rules I have set myself, I am allowed to say some things about this blog and about myself. First of all, here are some of those rules.

No introductions or statements of intent before 10 substantial posts are complete.

No complaining about the day job.

Focus on the words first.

No rash promises

I have broken all of these directives in early blog posts before. And the articles looked sad and lonely two years later when I came back to put them out of their misery. There's nothing like making big promises in your first post to kill all hope of productivity.

Now, though, with ten posts safely submitted, maybe I can proceed with an introduction.

Where do you think you're going?

Over at LifeHacker a recent post by Kevin Purdy relates perfectly to my 10 Minute Writer experience. Although anecdotal, some of the conclusions are similar to mine. In particular – limiting the scope of a session helps you to focus on the task at hand.

A quote after the jump:

The spam machine

Vern Emery sounds to me like the kind of man who might drive a pocket Audi sports car. He's cut and pressed in clean lines and he sits three inches from the back of your car on the freeway. He's out tonight with Elinor Naquin, who likes him despite, or is it because of, an arrogant streak that gets him service in restaurants but often reduces those around him to ciphers in his own plan.

He shares a secret with three other people

Bzzzt! Ding! Write

I was discussing my ten minute technique with some friends last week. One of them asked whether it was hard to get into the right state of mind to write for such short sessions. Surely I'd spend most of the time just getting into the mood?

That was a very good question, it turns out. I haven't found it especially hard to arrive at that slightly trance-like state you need for words to flow, at least not all the time. And it occurred to me that this part of the process should have been more difficult. After all, it always has been.

So I returned to an essay (a lecture, really) by Robert Olen Butler called The Zone. It's from his collection From Where You Dream. Here's what strikes me as the take home package of the lecture:

The ten minute writer

For some reason, the prospect of writing often fills me with mild panic. It's the way I want to spend my time, and I whine and I beg and I steal to get it. But when I finally secure an hour or two to write, I'm often reduced to a state of frustrated immobility.

I'm a very good procrastinator. I'm in love with coffee, and new emails, and a small stable of frequently-refreshed websites. I like to read the Guardian Review over a week. And catch up on New Yorker articles. I'm not remotely a tidy person, but when I sit down to write I find myself driven to vacuum, or to clean the bathroom. Not so much as to make my house a decent place to live in, you understand, I wouldn't want to give you the impression that my procrastination is practically useful. My attempts at housework are as short-lived as my bouts of writerly focus. And that's how it goes for hours at a time. Cups of coffee. Checked emails. Half-read articles. Abortive housework. A dreary process. Uninspiring and dispiriting.

So when I happened upon a trick that improved my productivity it was no small discovery.