The human brain can track up to four complex thoughts simultaneously, and yet — just before lunchtime today — I counted the open windows on my new 17″ laptop.
Six OpenOffice windows (five text, one spreadsheet), four Live Writer windows (my blog editor), three draft e-mails, a still warm-to-the-touch Google Talk window, and yes — two Copywriter windows (perfect when line and character counts are important).
By my count, that’s 16 writer-driven windows , and in that environment — one running at 4x my brain’s rated capacity (no jokes, please) — how much room am I creating to think?
Multitasking With a Mono-Brain
You may have noticed a lack of posts lately. A story of alien abduction would cover my tracks in the most traffic-friendly way, but the reality is different; I’ve started a book-length personal project.
For a writer who’s spent the last two decades hammering out 300-word pieces centered around single-sentence headlines, it’s a change.
A big change.
Almost immediately, I ran into a hitch. It wasn’t writer’s block.
It was the sheer number of writer-facing media channels calling for my attention.
At the risk of sounding like a codger, it wasn’t always this way. And yes, it’s interesting how the addition of a “deep thought” personal project finally exposed the problem, which kinda snuck up on me.
Still, this isn’t a plea for time management tips; I’m figuring out what works, and yes, it’s overdue.
The Hard Part
Fitting a couple hours of personal writing into a day already crammed with dangling participles and caffeine isn’t without its difficulties.
But neither does it lack in satisfaction.
I’m not going to bore you with detailed summaries of writer’s angst.
I do aim to interest you in the juicy bits. After all, this book project came to life at the intersection of blogging and what others have called the online world’s “empowerment of the individual.”
In less stuffy terms, it means I wouldn’t be writing the book if it wasn’t for a blog, and I wouldn’t have written the business plan if it wasn’t for the Internet.
The Value Added Author
I talk often of the Value-Added Copywriter. It’s a laudable concept — the idea that someone knows how to do things beyond their narrow specialty.
Equally laudable is the idea that we’d leverage that value-added knowledge for our own benefit.
Stay tuned. And keep writing, Tom Chandler.
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