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20.41: DongWon Song’s Personal Writing Process · Writing Excuses

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• 1:31
  [SPEAKER_04]: Season 20, Episode 41.
• 1:33
  [SPEAKER_04]: This is Writing Excuses.
• 1:38
  [SPEAKER_04]: My own personal writing process.
• 1:40
  [SPEAKER_04]: I'm Mary Rabinette.
• 1:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm Donglun, I'm Dan.
• 1:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm Aaron, and I'm Howard.
• 1:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: So this week, we're continuing on conversation about our individual writing processes, and we are now talking about my process.
• 1:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: So welcome to the chaos corner.
• 1:57
  [SPEAKER_04]: I thought mine was the chaos corner.
• 1:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think we're gonna find that a lot of the chaos corner.
• 2:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: Um, you know, I think there are some overlaps with my process in very Robinette's most notably in the, it's very irregular, right, um, I, as some of you may know have a day job that day job is very demanding time wise.
• 2:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: It is very unpredictable in terms of when I wake up in the morning.
• 2:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: I often don't know.
• 2:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: what my day is going to look like, you know, I'll have meetings and things like that, but I'll look at my email and be like, oh, this is on fire today.
• 2:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: I guess that's my day now, right?
• 2:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: So a lot of times when I'm going to be busy and what's happening that day, it's very hard for me to predict ahead of time.
• 2:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: So I don't really have schedule time to work on creative projects.
• 2:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: So for me, I'm really fitting writing in around
• 2:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: the main thing that I'm doing with my life, which is being a literary agent, working with my clients, right?
• 2:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: So I think my process of everyone here probably looks the most like working around a day job in terms of not being a full-time professional writer, right?
• 3:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, I mean, that's the first thing is I'm trying to fit those things in, but when it comes to processes itself, I think where I start to differ from Mary Rominet
• 3:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: right.
• 3:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: So when I sit down to work, I need a very like aesthetic, orderly, clean space, low stimulus.
• 3:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: So like, I don't like playing music while I work.
• 3:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: I don't like other distractions while I work.
• 3:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: I sometimes will work in a coffee shop, but I do find airports and transit.
• 3:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: Anything where there's lots of stuff happening to be quite distracting, right?
• 3:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: And so what I kind of
• 3:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: not necessarily focus.
• 3:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: I don't think of it as a hyper focus.
• 3:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think of it as a sort of just like empty space in which it's almost like a more meditative state rather than a focus state if that makes sense.
• 3:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: To me, there's a distinction between those.
• 3:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: And so what I think about it is removing things from the space until I'm at a place where I can actually get my brain to latch on to the thing I want it to latch on to.
• 4:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: Otherwise, it will find anything else to latch on to in my space around me, right?
• 4:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: So
• 4:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: it often starts with me taking a notebook out into my backyard sitting down in the sun with a cup of coffee and just jotting down a handful of notes in like true free flow mode.
• 4:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm not making an outline.
• 4:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm not doing any of that.
• 4:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: I am just writing down like okay here's the baseline thoughts.
• 4:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: If I need to write it essay about this, if I'm doing a piece of world-building for a game, if I'm planning a session for a game, if I'm you know doing a lot of that writing work a lot of times
• 4:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: just really start with like simple sentences, what is this essay, what is this, you know, piece of the world I'm trying to figure out, what is this character, this plot, things like that, and then just writing down handful of notes, and then I put that down and walk away from it for a while because what I've done is write down the questions so that my brain can chew on it in the background while I go to do a bunch of other stuff, right?
• 4:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: A lot of my process is maximizing
• 5:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: flow of it will solve the problems while I'm not looking at it, and then when I reach for the answers, they'll be there, right?
• 5:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: And so what I'm trying to do is see it with the information and the questions I need to ask it, and then walk away and come back.
• 5:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's almost like terror, you know, weird way, you know what I mean?
• 5:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's like, here's my question.
• 5:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: Now I'm not going to look at you for a while, and I'll come back and see what the output is.
• 5:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I love that and it reminds me of people saying like when they're in the shower they'll get like the great idea because like it's the time in which I don't know everything can come to the surface so if you're letting things happen in the background how do you make sure that when the answer comes like you're ready to capture it you know what I mean you don't like fall asleep and forget that kind of thing
• 5:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I'm not always every now and again it will come to me in a quiet moment like yeah in the shower or while I'm on a run or whatever days are out on a hike like those are useful moments.
• 5:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: So to capture those voice memos who really handy, you know what I mean just grabbing your phone and being like here's the crazy idea ahead or texting a friend you know what I mean be like hey.
• 6:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: I just had this idea of what do you think about this, right?
• 6:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: In part, a lot of what it is very collaborative, very rarely, might just work in a vacuum because a lot of it is writing for games.
• 6:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: So I'll ping one of my players or I'll ping another GM that I work with or something like that and be like, hey, here's stuff I'm thinking about, what do you think about this?
• 6:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: So I have that, that I can do.
• 6:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: And but a lot of times, if I have the thought in a place where I can't do those things,
• 6:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: and it goes out of my brain, there's no, I don't regret losing it.
• 6:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: If I lost it, it wasn't worth hanging on to, right?
• 6:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm trusting my unconscious brain to do that work.
• 6:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: And if it still thought it was a cool idea and it was relevant, a lot of times when I've gone back to dig those up, I'm like,
• 6:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: That ain't it, you know what I mean, you know, you know what feels like genius in the moment when you wake up from a dream or all those kind of things very rarely holds up under further examination right so a lot of this is about cultivating spaces where I'm not actively engaging with something else.
• 7:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: So if I'm going on a walk or run or something, and I bring a podcast, my unconscious isn't going to be doing that work.
• 7:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: If I go without headphones and just truly do the chaotic thing, using a word that the kids use on the internet that I'm not going to use right now, I'm just going to walk around without headphones and really
• 7:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: let my brain think about the thing and like taken stimulus taken in like sunshine and the natural world and looking at birds or whatever but not actively doing things and that lets my brain sort of start feeding me those answers when I sit down to write.
• 7:42
  [SPEAKER_03]: I can't remember who said it but it was
• 7:46
  [SPEAKER_03]: some recent science where where someone said, you know, it looks like the key to creativity is boredom.
• 7:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yes.
• 7:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: This is a thing I say all the time, two writers, and I say cultivate boredom.
• 7:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: If you're having trouble getting the work done, if you're having trouble coming with ideas,
• 8:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: if you're stuck on something and this works for me is become as bored as you possibly can.
• 8:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: Sit in your house, do not play a video game, do not watch television, do not read a book, do not put music on.
• 8:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: sit in your living room and stare at the wall.
• 8:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: I swear to God, until you want to claw your skin off, like until you are etching in furious and then you sit down in a computer and you will write exactly what you need to write.
• 8:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: You need to let your brain rest sometimes.
• 8:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: Your brain means that rest break.
• 8:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: And this actually all comes from me taking a bunch of cognitive science classes when I was in college, is when I started thinking this way.
• 8:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then over time, I started putting those into practice in different ways.
• 8:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: these may sound like hell to a lot of people, but a little bit of torturing yourself by not doing something, I think can really help activate your brain when you go to sit down and do it.
• 8:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: I know, I guarantee that there are people out there listening right now, screaming about the luxury that you have of being bored, of not having kids running around screaming and things like that, but that's not really, I think, the point you're trying to make.
• 9:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: Uh, you are not exulting over the fact that you have a bunch of free time.
• 9:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: What you're really telling us is talking about how to fit these things into, yes, the time that you do have, you know, taking a moment here where you happen to have some time to jot down ideas and then let them percolate until the next time you have some time.
• 9:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's not all about, you know,
• 9:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: being completely free in an empty room all day for hours.
• 9:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: True.
• 9:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: And also, you know, I don't have kids, I don't have pets like my life is quite simplified in a certain way, but also I'm incredibly busy in doing a million things all the time.
• 9:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: So it's hard for me to make that time.
• 9:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: What I will say is think of this as work time.
• 9:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: When I'm talking about this,
• 10:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: use your time that you set aside to write to do this.
• 10:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: This is work and I want to make that really clear.
• 10:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: You can say I'm taking two hours to write and then what you do is walk out the house without any headphones and without your phone and walk around for an hour and come back.
• 10:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: You've done writing work by doing that because you let your brain do that unconscious work.
• 10:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I think one thing that people, when people switch to full-time writing, they discover very quickly that they can't write for eight hours a day.
• 10:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: You can only write a certain number of words and the brain kind of finds its maximum for some people.
• 10:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: That's insanely high number and for some people that's only a few hundred words.
• 10:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: Either way around, those people are being productive with the writing day because you're using that rest of the time to process.
• 10:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: And what I'm saying is, use your writing time where you're not putting words on the page very, very intentionally.
• 10:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: And sometimes the intention that you need to bring to it is nothing negative space and cultivating that border.
• 10:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I was also going to say, I think we've gotten really good, or we, by we all say me at like putting distraction into times of boredom.
• 11:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: So like the number of people who like bring a phone into the bathroom, a time in which you could theoretically just be doing nothing mentally, at least, hopefully, and just like, you know, in your space, or waiting in a doctor's office, or like there are times in which like the world actually kind of forces you to wait and not do other things.
• 11:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: But I think nowadays, like you tend to think, oh, that's a time where I'm going to check my email or whatever I definitely do that.
• 11:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so as you were talking, I was thinking about, even if they're just like a moment, like I'm in the shower for a second, like not listening to music or letting that be quiet time as opposed to time that I feel like I should be using, because I think sometimes the productivity trap,
• 11:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: That can happen is the feeling that you should always be doing something with your time even if that's something is just doomsgrowing and so therefore if you're in the shower like couldn't you also be listening to a podcast or you know doing this other thing or instead of just saying like I'm just going to stand still I think the just stand still in life is something that our lives really push us against
• 12:12
  [SPEAKER_04]: There was something you said earlier about removing barriers and distractions, and I actually wrote it down because I'm like, oh, yeah, no, that's a very good, very good point because there's, there are things where I am the one who has introduced the distraction.
• 12:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: And when you were saying last episode about, you need to protect your time from yourself.
• 12:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: And we're talking about the same thing in the ways.
• 12:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: And with that, I would like to go to a break.
• 12:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: And when we come back, I want to talk about being embodied while you're right.
• 12:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: Welcome back.
• 12:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, we've been talking about cultivating boredom as part of your writing process and the ways in which that you need to be sort of present in the moment to let your brains sort of do the work of processing.
• 12:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: So that creative well is there when you go to sit down and write.
• 12:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: Aaron knows making the point that you can use these very small moments.
• 13:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: I mean,
• 13:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: When I say get bored, for me, that doesn't take four hours, that takes about three seconds before I'm like, what's happening on Instagram?
• 13:12
  [SPEAKER_03]: And what in every second for a minute?
• 13:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, exactly.
• 13:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, we live in a world that has monetized our attention, distraction, every device in your house wants you to pay attention to it, and is designed almost maliciously to create that relationship with it, right?
• 13:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: And so resisting that takes a lot of
• 13:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: will power and focus and intention and all of these things I'm talking about, but it is really important for you to make that space to work creatively.
• 13:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I want to talk about that relationship to your physical body, because in these moments, a lot of times what you can do is tap into sensation to help you get out of that distraction loop.
• 13:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: one of my feeling in my body, what is my breath doing?
• 13:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: Where how does my leg feel sitting on this chair, right?
• 13:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: And sometimes those aren't always the best sensations, right?
• 14:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: A lot of us have bodies that don't cooperate that way that we want them to.
• 14:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: But I think even in those moments connecting with what is my physical presence in this room in this space can help you access a space that lets your brain sort of have the freedom to roam and wander a little bit.
• 14:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: Um, and like really what I'm talking about a lot are meditation practices right when I'm this is meditation without saying you have to sit there and meditate right, but you know a lot of meditation is jobs observation you sit there you move through your body you think about what your body is feeling you feel your breath all of those things and you just don't chase thoughts as they occur the you let them come you let them pass don't chase them don't hang on to them.
• 14:42
  [SPEAKER_04]: Do you do those in the space that you're planning on writing or is that a separate or there's two different?
• 14:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: But often I will start that process in a place where I'm not writing, you know, I will leave my office because my office is a place of incredible distraction, right?
• 14:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: In part, it is, you know, the same computer I play video games on.
• 15:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's the same computer my email lives on, right?
• 15:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: So it is hard for me to have that sense of lack of distraction when I'm sitting in my office chair.
• 15:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: So I will go sit in the backyard.
• 15:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: I will go for a walk like I mentioned, you know, all of those things can be really helpful for that meditative process.
• 15:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: Even going to the gym, even though you're being active in doing things, being that complete psychopath in the corner without headphones on, that the gym can be a really great way to access that because when you're doing something that active, it is forcing you to be in your body in the way that I'm talking about and then you're not thinking about your email, you're thinking about, oh god, I have to do another set, right?
• 15:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: And so I think those things can be really, really helpful.
• 15:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: Um, you, I absolutely love what you were saying about how the modern world is monetized our attention.
• 15:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: But I want to point out that, that, well, there is a new flavor to it that's been around forever.
• 15:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: A quote that I attribute to Renee DeCart, I don't know if it actually is, um, and I pair it this to my kids all the time, uh, is all of mankind's ills stem from our inability to sit quietly in an empty room.
• 16:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: Um, and that constant need for distraction has been around forever.
• 16:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: And the, I, I love what you're saying is about how to break past that because it's one thing for me to just tell my kids this all the time, that doesn't actually help them do it, right?
• 16:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: That doesn't help them find ways to entertain themselves.
• 16:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: So,
• 16:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: taking these principles of meditation, taking these kind of mindfulness concepts of being aware of sensory input and what's around you all the time, those are actual tools you can use to overcome this need for stimuli.
• 16:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and the thing I want to point out, and excellent point that this has been around forever, right?
• 16:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: This is also very influenced by Virginia Wolf's a room of one's own, right?
• 17:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's very similar concept of, you need that space to write.
• 17:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: You need your own space in a way, and protecting that from other demands in your life, including family, and work, and all these things, which are incredibly difficult to do.
• 17:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: I want to flag another aspect of it, though, that kind of ties with what you're saying is that
• 17:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: To do the thing that I'm talking about of being truly present in your body and alone with your thoughts in a room with no other distraction is very, very scary when you first start doing it.
• 17:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: It is very, very scary because you will feel the emotions that you feel in a direct and unfiltered way, and that is a hard thing to do unless you have practice doing it, and unless you have gone through some therapeutic and healing processes.
• 17:42
  [SPEAKER_04]: I'm going to recommend a free resource, which is balanced, it's an app, so I am telling you to use your phone, but they have a, it's an easy way to go into meditation and they have a couple of tracks on focus, which if you need guidance on learning how to do this, you can start there and then you don't have to keep using it.
• 18:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: I do have a question, like, I love this.
• 18:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: But how do you deal with, reminds me of something Mary Robinette was talking about in the last episode with the idea that like, there are things waiting, like there are monsters of the things you need to do and the people you need to care about, waiting outside your room of calm and not feeling like a guilt or like starting to associate the time you're taking for yourself as time you're taking away from other things that you should or would be doing?
• 18:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: Before I do this, I trap them.
• 18:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: I go out and I put them in a little box and that box is my notebook.
• 18:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: So before doing this and I do this before I go to bed, actually you're talking to this when you wake up for me this is a pre-bed ritual of I get my I sit down with my notebook in my office I close the door for like five minutes and I write down all the meetings I have for tomorrow, all the tasks I have to do.
• 18:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: Here's the things that I need to read.
• 18:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: Here's the emails I need to respond to.
• 18:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: I make my to-do list the night before and that way when I go to sleep,
• 19:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: And this really helps to with making that space is I can't go and do the things I'm talking about until I've done the thing first of taking those monsters and writing little box around them and then they live there for the moment.
• 19:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: They are contained with my notebook and they will be there when I open my notebook up again to yell at me.
• 19:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: But for this particular moment, they're over there, right?
• 19:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: So that's a really excellent question and you know, that is kind of my strategy for managing it, which helps with anxiety, which helps with that pressure and all of those things.
• 19:31
  [SPEAKER_03]: I love the idea of putting the monsters in the box.
• 19:36
  [SPEAKER_03]: That's, I do something, I do something very similar.
• 19:41
  [SPEAKER_03]: What I wanted to say though is that the quote that Dan, you know, about sitting in an empty room, it's, it's blaze Pascal.
• 19:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: There you go.
• 19:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: I had to Google it.
• 19:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: Very close.
• 19:50
  [SPEAKER_03]: All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.
• 19:56
  [SPEAKER_03]: which, yeah, that's that's awesome.
• 19:58
  [SPEAKER_03]: But the first result I got when I searched was Moliere.
• 20:02
  [SPEAKER_03]: You're going to love this.
• 20:04
  [SPEAKER_03]: All of the hills of mankind, all this tragic misfortunes that fill the history books, have a risen merely from a lack of skill at dancing.
• 20:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: I will find it very appropriate there.
• 20:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: You went to the comic.
• 20:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: I love to it.
• 20:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
• 20:20
  [SPEAKER_03]: Well, but the thing, in a room alone, and if you look at what dance really is, it is a mastery of self, a mastery of movement, a mastery of physical interaction with others in a partnership.
• 20:39
  [SPEAKER_03]: I don't know that those are the same thing, but they're definitely two sides of the same coin.
• 20:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, movement is meditation practice, right?
• 20:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: This is why yoga is a meditation practice.
• 20:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: They're breathing meditation practice.
• 20:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: We think of meditation in the Zen Buddhist way.
• 20:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: You sit there very quietly with your legs crossed and don't think thoughts.
• 20:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: That's a very specific approach, right?
• 20:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: What I believe is taking a shower can be a meditative practice.
• 21:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's going for a walk, going for a run, going to the gym, dancing.
• 21:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: The people I talk to who love to dance
• 21:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: all talk about it in the same way that I think of meditation practice as being very effective.
• 21:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's why I like how I really hate stuff like Power Yoga because it's sort of like, wow, you guys have wandered off the point in my view and my view and that is that if you get something out of it great and in what you're getting out of his movement and fitness and exercise, fantastic, but anyways.
• 21:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: I want to ask how your process handles multiple projects.
• 21:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: Right now I have a book that I am outlining, a different book that I am writing, a different book that I am revising, and an RPG campaign that I run every week.
• 21:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: When you give yourself this blank space and let your brain just kind of percolate on whatever it needs,
• 21:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: is there a way that you assure it's thinking about the right project?
• 21:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: You got to prime the engine.
• 21:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: This is the process I was talking about at the very beginning of this.
• 22:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: If you sit down and you write a bunch of just random thoughts about the project that you're working on, right?
• 22:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: And so if you prime the engine with those questions, then the next thing is going to chew on is those questions, right?
• 22:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: So if I need to work on an essay for the newsletter, I think I have not done in too long.
• 22:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: You know, if I'm going to sit down or, you know, if I'm working on it, because I'm often running multiple games too, so what I will do is sit down right those questions and those thoughts and then go off and do something and that sort of helps me sort of focus the unfocused if that makes sense and gives it a direction and I think one thing that people are missing in this process is that intention setting at the beginning of it.
• 22:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: and this is intentional boredom is one way to think about it, right?
• 22:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: And so you need to set that ahead of time and that's like priming the problem.
• 22:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: So, great question.
• 22:49
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, if you're accidentally bored, then you might not be ready to exploit the output of the boredom.
• 22:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: Um, that's how you end up chewing on that thing that you said in sixth grade that was embarrassing one time.
• 23:02
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
• 23:03
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
• 23:04
  [SPEAKER_04]: I'm one of the things that I'm struck by is we're having these conversations is how different your process is from mine.
• 23:11
  [SPEAKER_04]: But how many of, there's some places where I'm like, oh, yeah, I do that.
• 23:15
  [SPEAKER_04]: It just looks different when I do it.
• 23:18
  [SPEAKER_04]: Like, um, I had a coffee shop that I loved because it was about a five minute walk and it was just enough time and I would think about what
• 23:28
  [SPEAKER_04]: And so when I got there, I was ready to sit down, it was that kind of priming the prompt.
• 23:32
  [SPEAKER_04]: Sometimes I will literally write down at the top of a page.
• 23:38
  [SPEAKER_04]: Here's the mood.
• 23:39
  [SPEAKER_04]: And it's that intention setting.
• 23:41
  [SPEAKER_04]: It looks totally different, but I'm fascinated by the overlaps.
• 23:48
  [SPEAKER_03]: You both have an org problem.
• 23:50
  [SPEAKER_03]: And one of you has trained with a sword, and the other has trained with hiring mercenaries.
• 23:57
  [SPEAKER_03]: You know, there are multiple ways to take care of these works.
• 24:00
  [SPEAKER_04]: It all comes down to a sword.
• 24:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: It all comes down to a sword.
• 24:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: The other thing I want to flag here is, you know, I talked about this with great authority over the last 20 minutes or so, but I'm not good at this, right?
• 24:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: This is really hard to do.
• 24:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
• 24:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I succeeded this maybe one time in time, right?
• 24:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: I spent a lot of my time being too distracted by the distracting role that I live in, by being too delighted by the game, by wanting to walk into a TV show, by wanting to hang out with my partner or all these things that like intrude on this time.
• 24:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: It is very difficult to make this space.
• 24:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, this kind of goes back to what Dan was saying earlier of like, you know, all that sounds nice, but look at my life.
• 24:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's so full and distracting.
• 24:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: This is ideal practice as I'm talking about.
• 24:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: And again, this goes back to last episode, Aaron, you sort of brought this up in terms of habit versus what I would call a practice is be forgiving to yourself when you fail at this, because you're going to you, because it's really hard to do.
• 24:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I do all the time.
• 24:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: Lord knows I'm behind on every project I've ever worked on, right?
• 24:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: And so I think,
• 25:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: understanding that this is an optimal version of it and these are the things that work for me when I'm able to do them, but I'm also saying as you're pursuing these goals of mindfulness and intention and all that to be really, really generous and kind to yourself throughout this process.
• 25:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: Um, and with that, we're going to end this episode and have a little bit of homework for you, and I think you might be able to anticipate what it is from what I'm saying, but I want you to go sit somewhere, don't bring your phone, don't bring your headphones, somewhere in your house, go for a walk, whatever the things are that we've been talking about, and really cultivate that boredom.
• 25:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: Sit there for five minutes, ten minutes, whatever you have time for,
• 25:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: until you feel that itch of like irritation of doing nothing, and then push it a little bit longer.
• 25:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then go sit down and write.
• 25:50
  [SPEAKER_04]: This has been writing excuses.
• 25:52
  [SPEAKER_04]: You're out of excuses.
• 25:54
  [SPEAKER_04]: Now go write.
• 25:55
  [SPEAKER_04]: After being bored.
• 25:59
  [SPEAKER_04]: Writing excuses has been brought to you by our listeners, patrons, and friends.
• 26:03
  [SPEAKER_04]: For this episode, your hosts were Mary Robinette Coall,
• 26:10
  [SPEAKER_04]: This episode was engineered by Marshall Card Jr., mastered by Alex Jackson, and produced by Emma Reynolds.
• 26:17
  [SPEAKER_04]: For more information, visit writingexuses.com.