AT HOME: Too Lazy to Think
Writing is neither straight-forward nor easy. That sends some writers to seek distraction — they’re in excellent company.
By Loraine Page
COLUMNIST
I think about scrubbing floors for a living. I picture a large expanse of vinyl, over which I'm slowly pushing a sponge. It’s just wipe, wipe, wipe.
Of course, there is no such job.
Everything in life requires thinking. I get especially frustrated with thinking when I have to write. I manage a few great paragraphs, then my brain quits.
It always does this. I go look for my cat to give her a kiss. She is on my bed, curled up in a ball and not looking to be kissed. She opens her eyes in case I’ve come to talk about treats.
Feeling slightly rejected, I go to the kitchen sink where cups and bowls welcome me. I wash them as I listen to a YouTube video or a rare podcast I like.
This game we play, my brain and I, where I pretend we don't have to write anymore and my brain believes it and is able to recover from the trauma, happens almost every time I write.
Calling my brain back to write is especially difficult when it’s one of my biology articles, particularly one that calls for me to understand a complicated study, or this column, in which I have to gain the interest of the reader.
The difficulty lies with attention. Like a butterfly that wants to flit around, checking out all the flowers, it resents being told to sit still. Eventually, it will sit, but then I’ll need it to stay for the duration.
I don’t know why, after all these decades of writing — articles, essays, reviews, books — we still have to do this “one-step forward, one-step backward” dance.
In the beginning of my career, I read a ton of how-to-write books. One of them still stands out to me today: Just Open a Vein: Writers on Writing. The title made me feel vindicated.
The author borrowed the phrase from a journalist, Red Smith, who had inspired a generation of writers. He was known to have said, “There's nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.”
A website called ThinkingMaps addressed “the high cognitive load” involved with writing. One part, titled “The Hardest Part of Writing is Thinking,” declares that “Writing is ninety-nine percent thinking, one percent writing.”
The site explained that writing is a highly complex skill that involves many discrete sub-skills at the macro and micro levels. At macro, it’s about your point, the best way to structure your piece, the big ideas and conclusions to get across, and the supporting evidence and details that are needed. Micro is about typing skills and decisions about word choice, syntax, and grammar.
These writing processes, it said, are happening at the same time, adding to the overall cognitive load of the task.
I googled “deep thinking and concentration,” since those words scare me a little. AI responded quickly. I may have a hate/love relationship with this computerized entity, but it has a way of summing things up in easy language.
AI stated that deep thinking and concentration are closely linked states of focus, where the brain dedicates sustained attention to a task. It then provided a sampling of professions that require a high degree of concentration.
It listed surgery, writing, accounting, architecture, piloting, and musical performance.
I was pleased with my placement next to surgery. I’ve always admired surgeons. I’m in awe that they can maintain their acuity for a 10-hour operation, while I can’t last at my computer more than 10 minutes before I have to get up and kiss my cat.
Singers on a stage, well, I bow to them. The deep concentration they must need to get through their songs without forgetting the words— it amazes me.
Pilots, I don’t know what to say here. I would like to think they maintain their concentration. If they can’t, I would hope they hand things off to the co-captain. Or at least to AI.
I can’t say much about architects because I don’t know what they do. I believe they need to be precise, but they can leave work early, unlike pilots and surgeons.
Accountants do what I can’t do. I had an accountant once who said he can’t do what I do. Needless to say, I’m not a numbers person. Only very occasionally do I add a number to a piece I’m writing.
I realized I have a benefit these other professions don’t have. I can complain about writing in my writing. Imagine an accountant trying to do something similar? If he is so inclined, maybe he could find space in the ledger he’s working on. He could write “Too tedious. Leaving to become a writer — or a surgeon.”
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