How to Write with a Tiny Attention Span

Ooh, look, squirrel!

Ok. This one is gonna be as quick as I can possibly make it because, well…. the title should be pretty self-explanatory.

And look, no judgement. We don’t need excuses for why our brains are futzed. The fact that we want to write is the point. And sometimes there’s nothing to be done about the fact that we’re short on attention or time or energy or whatever.

don’t ask me where my nuts are, I don’t even know what day it is...

So this is about being at peace with the ‘whatever’ and telling all the excuses to shut tf up and just taking two minutes to pause, listen, observe, think and scribble.

Ready?

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Two minutes on the clock:

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Shut your eyes.

Open your ears.

What can you hear?

Write it down.

For example: I can hear…

• The fridge buzzing through the wall

• Traffic white-noising past

• Two mothers chatting on the street and a kid on a clattering scooter

• Builders yelling instructions to each other up on the scaffolding next door

• And, if I concentrate really hard: faint tinnitus and the blood rushing in my ears

Is there anything interesting there? Anything I could incorporate into my work-in-progress or inspire something new?

I kinda like the fridge buzz, and the build up of distracting outside noises that could perhaps end up contrasting with some kind of internal fictional action. Or maybe my protagonist is having a moment of epiphany and their ears are ringing.

Pick one of the audibles on your list and spend 30 seconds sketching it out in more detail.

Now quick, your attention span has run out. Move along! »

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One minute thirty...

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Where have you been this week? Or even just today? Make a list.

Eg: today, so far, I’ve been to:

• A waiting room full of umbrella plants

• A click-and-collect store

• The chemist

• The petrol station

• My car, sitting in traffic

Which one of them could be worth writing about? What details could add depth to a scene?

The waiting room was so warm it was soporific, and so quiet it felt like the air was muffled.

At the chemist, the pharmacist’s two little boys were waiting for their dad to finish his shift and opened the door grandly for me when I arrived, announcing: “Welcome to the pharmacy!” (It was heckin’ cute.)

A police car ended up driving behind me almost the whole way home and I started getting paranoid that I’d done something wrong, so drove like I was taking my test for the first time…

Pick one of your places and write about the nitty gritty details of it for 30 seconds maximum.

Now that’s quite enough of that. Next!

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Sixty seconds left...

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How you feelin’?

• Did you sleep funny and wake up with a cricked neck?

• Have you eaten something delicious today?

• Did you just bash your elbow on the door frame?

• Is it sunny? Have you been outside? Is it glorious?

• Did you step in a wet patch and get your socks soggy? Ew.

• Can you reach out and touch three different textures within arm’s reach? What are they like?

I just yawned in a weird way and pulled something in my jaw as if it was trying to unhinge itself. (Would not recommend.)

Beside me is a knitted blanket, a braided phone charger cable and my favourite mug, which I just picked up thinking it still had tea in it, but found only cold ceramic. The saddest of all mug encounters.

Gimme something physical, tactile, tangible, touchable — the feeling of holding an object in your hands.

Gimme pleasure, pain, bodily functions, movement — the physical experience of being a human.

Make a list of physical feelings you can connect with in this very moment. Pick ONE to describe as vividly as possible. 30 seconds. Go.

Almost done. Switch it up!

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Thirty seconds...

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Close your eyes again.

How are you really feeling right now? Set aside the physical and find an emotion. Maybe you’ve been through a rollercoaster of ‘em today.

I’ve been:

• Tired

• Enthusiastic

• Irritable (but trying to hide it)

• Affectionate

• Worried I was going to be late

• Contented as a sunbathing cat

Any of them worth transposing into one of my fictional characters’ heads?

I tend to lean towards the more conflict-laden ones, so: ‘irritable-but-trying-to-hide-it’ feels like it could be fun to characterise (though not so fun in real life). Similarly: ‘worried about being late’ is always a good way to add some urgency to a story.

And on the happier side, ‘affectionate’ is such a warm, gentle feeling that (in my mind) manifests quite specifically, as opposed to the overarching emotion of ‘love’ or ‘friendship’ or ‘hey I like you a lot’. I should probably figure out how to write about that, huh?

You know what to do. Choose your emotion. Deepen it. Contextualise it. Fictionalise it. Make it feel real in your writing. Write like the wind!

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And we’re done.

Oh look, you just wrote a bunch of stuff.

In fact, you practised ‘writing what you know’, which is basically just hacking the sensory/perception system. And if your brain wants to ping pong between ideas, all the better for it. Grab ‘em while they’re hot and scribble them down.

‘Write What You Know’ is my favourite writing trick, which is why I post about it every month:

I’m also running a live 1hr Zoom workshop in May all about using your Write What You Know skills for characterisation — a little light (ethical) identity theft, if you will.

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Now go and let your attention span free on the next shiny thing.

Happy writing : )