When I was a little girl, I often found myself lost. I’d climb a tree and open a book and was transported into other worlds, and our own would fade away. I loved it. I wasn’t actively trying to banish the real world, but I couldn’t help it. I’d read for hours until someone found me and told me it was time for dinner or that I needed to do something besides read all day. It wasn’t long before I was up in the tree with a notebook and pen, trying to write my own stories. My mind swirled with ideas and they forced themselves out of me.
At age ten, when I stepped into a dance studio for the first time, I had the same feeling. I quickly learned that dance was a form of storytelling, and it was beautiful. I’ve always been drawn to beautiful things. I threw myself headlong into it and learned quickly.
I saw my former dance instructor the other day and she brought something to my attention. She said, “You were such a serious student. Maybe my most serious. You came to class and you had a job to do, and nothing broke you out of your focus.”
I’ve been this way my whole life. When I love something, when I’m really into making it work, I stop at nothing. Some may say I take things to the extreme. For example, in my high school English class, we did the obligatory unit on Beowulf. Now, to be honest, I wasn’t that into Beowulf, but I was really into that class in general (shocking, I know), so when it came time to write a literary essay, I got myself really into it, and stayed up all night writing my essay in the actual style of Beowulf. (I’ll address the staying up all night as a product of my chronic procrastination habit in another post.)
Now, I did get an A on this particular assignment, but to be clear, that in no way implies that I was a stellar student or an over-achiever in general. I wasn’t either of those things. I’m still not. But when I love something, when I get super into the idea of finishing something, that hyper-focus kicks in and I make it the best I can possibly make it. As a student, that meant that I lived and breathed that particular assignment and aced the crap out of it.
As an adult, well, that’s something different. There are times when I have thought of this as a super-power. It’s an inherited trait. My mother has it too. She’s a brilliant artist, and when she gets into her artistic endeavors, she’s in it. As a child I remember standing next to her watching her paint for minutes on end without her realizing I was right beside her. I’d speak a soft word and she’d jump like I had just apparated into the room.
My writing is the subject of my current hyper-focus. I could easily go days on end shut away from people, forgetting to shower and forgetting to eat (and I love to eat). I’m so into my current stories, that even when I’m doing real-life tasks like cleaning my house or working or driving somewhere, my mind is thinking about ways to improve my story, to fill in plot holes, or just running through random dialogue ideas. It’s a very useful habit for the success of my writing, but like my mother, I sometimes find myself startled when real life appears out of nowhere.
I was recently reminded (by my very loving, very supportive) spouse that I’ve been so into my writing that he and our three children kind of missed me. Between being back in school (a story for another time) and getting really into my current novel for the last few weeks, I’ve spent a lot of time staring at my computer screen. And this is the way that my super-power sometimes becomes my nemesis. When I was in high school staying up all night to write an over-the-top essay on Beowulf, my math homework sat by, quietly collecting dust. My point is, I’m not actually super-human, so something has to give.
Now this is the part where I briefly touch on the struggles that all of us mothers have; finding the balance between motherhood (and sometimes wifehood) and our own needs and desires and self-improvement. I’m not going to get into a whole thing about that, as it’s been written about approximately a million times, but I will say that like millions of mothers, I struggle to find that balance.
When I first became a mother, guess what my hyper-focus was? Motherhood. I poured everything I had into being a mom. Then I had a child with special health needs. I learned every single thing I could about her condition, about how to make her healthy. Hours and hours of time were poured into research, and that was ultimately a good thing for her. It’s a long, twisty story for another time, but because something always has to give, what happened by the end of it was that I lost myself somewhere along the way.
After a couple of dark years, with the encouragement of my (did I mention loving, supportive?) spouse, I fought my way into the light again, and in doing so, took a hard look at myself. Who was I? What did I want?
I want to write. I want to tell stories. I’m still the little girl curled up in the tree getting lost in the stories of C.S. Lewis and Phillip Pullman, who wrote a spectacularly bad first novella at eleven years old that was a total rip-off of the Chronicles of Narnia and Peter Pan, called The Chronicles of Netherland. But when I discovered this girl again, I hadn’t written anything in years.
So, I started reading again. I enrolled in school. And, with trepidation, I opened up my laptop and threw my first idea into Word. Two years later I haven’t stopped. But that was actually the easy part.
Now that I finally feel whole – and I really do – I need to figure out how to balance. I’ve never done it before. I suspect that if I ever become a successful writer it would be easier; I would have the time to write instead of sticking it in around work, school, parental responsibilities and whatever else comes up. But for now, (yes, that’s extreme optimism), it’s challenging. I have more to write than I have time to write it.
I wish I could conclude this post with my magical solution, but alas, it will have to be a cliffhanger ending. For now. Because now that I am beginning to understand this thing I do, I intend to use my hyper-focus to hyper-focus on figuring out how to manage my time.
Good luck to all the writers struggling with this. I know I’m not the only one. Now, I need to extract myself for a bit and do some real-life things.
Liz Highland 