Context Is Important to The Mind
Here’s the simplest way to explain how important context (ideas associated importance in a writer’s life) is to the human mind.
If I provide you with a list of twenty items and you just try to use brute force memory for remembering that list of items, then you will remember five to seven of them, give or take two. Some people will only remember three and others will be able to remember nine but basically no one will remember all twenty.
However, there are people who can indeed remember entire lists that contain hundreds of items. How is that possible? The answer is: context. All memory tricks that allow humans to learn long lists of things (such as all the cards in a deck, in order) use the trick of context.
What is the trick of context? It is sinply connecting the items together in a story. The brain remembers the story of the items even though it cannot remember long lists of items.
Researchers have also discovered that the best stories for remembering long lists are ones that:
- Use shocking language, creative storytelling, funny ideas and/or over-the-top events
- Use geographic location information
Another way to say that might be, don’t be boring.
The geographic location help comes from the brain’s ability to remember various spaces that it has been in. For example, imagine a house you grew up in but haven’t been in for many years. You can still walk through it. It’s as if the brain has built a map of it and you can see it.
What Does Context Have To Do With Writing Fast
When you keep things front of mind you end up working on them all the time. When you’re watching a show, even in the back of your mind you’re thinking of the story you’re writing. When you cutting the lawn or changing the oil in your car, you mind will be working on the story. You will be thinking about it.
Opposite of Fast
However, if you only work on your story one night every week, you’ll likely find that the story isn’t in your mind and you won’t work on it much.
You Can Only Serve One Master
It’s also true that life itself will get in the way and compared to life writing will never feel as important. It will always be more important to do something else like attend a birthday party, or clean out your desk or take a shower. Writing is not urgent, but if you do it and keep on going, it will become important.
How Do We Help Ourselves Write Fast?
- Remove barriers to creativity
- Make it easy to sit down and write two pages (250 words per page, 500 total) in fifteen minutes.
If you could really write two pages of draft copy in fifteen minutes then you could write your entire 350 page novel in just 175 days (less than half a year), even if you only wrote two pages a day.
It would only take you 175 X 15 (minutes) sessions to write your entire novel. That comes out to 2625 minutes / 60 (to get hours) which is only 43.75 hours.
If You Had A Plan & Took The Time
All of that means that if you had a plan and took the time, you could write your book in just a bit over one work week (8 hours a day for 5 days).
When You Sit Down, You Have to Have Work To Do
The issue is that when you sit down to write, you have to have work to do. You cannot waste time thinking about what you might write. Think of it this way. If you had a manager who said, “Write me a scene that is five pages long and shows a character trying to break into a donut shop after hours,” you could probably do it.
But, if you sit down and have no scenes to write and no idea what the character is doing or what to show the reader then you’re going to waste a lot of time chewing on pencils and cleaning your desk and doomscrolling social media.
Next article we’ll talk about how we create our daily work assignments so we can get the job done.
