Serve Steak, Not Stew

I like steak. I also like stew. What does that have to do with writing?

One of my biggest challenges is when I’m in the middle of writing one thing and something unrelated pops into my head. What do I do with the new idea?

I don’t want to lose a great thought, but I know a key element of good writing is focus.

Creative people are idea factories. Some of those ideas are great, some not so much, but our brains are constantly churning them out. We can’t turn it off.

For the most part, that’s a good thing. Still, even though we don’t want to lose a great idea that came to us in a flash of unexpected inspiration, we can’t afford to let it cause us to lose focus on the project at hand.

Stream-of-consciousness writing might be effective therapy for the writer, but it’s a challenge for the reader. When a friend who tends toward that style asked me to read and edit an article she’d written, I made some minor changes, corrected the grammar, and removed a story.

The only specific comment she had on my input was about the story. “You didn’t like that?”

I told her it was cute—and it was—but it distracted from her main message and didn’t belong in the piece. If the story had illustrated her point, I would have left it in. But including the story showed that she had lost focus.

The ability to focus has nothing to do with creativity. It’s a learnable discipline that helps you maximize your creative talents.

As a writer, you want to serve your readers a beautiful à la carte steak, sizzling on a platter, with just a sprig of parsley. Don’t give them a stew with whatever you happened to have in the refrigerator tossed in. That might work for a hearty stew; it doesn’t work for writing. And no matter how high the quality of meat and other ingredients you use, it’s still stew.

So what do I do with a new idea that tries to interrupt my writing flow?

I pause long enough to analyze it. Is this something that needs to be included in what I’m working on? Does it support my message? If yes, I put it in. If not, I make a note and add it to one of my idea files. Then I let it go and stay focused on the topic at hand.

That’s how I serve steak, not stew.

Jacquelyn Lynn
Follow me