How to Find Focus in Your Writing

I have been writing for most of my life, but most of what I have written is not for public consumption. It would probably be deemed “writing as therapy.” I ramble on and on about life and rarely (if ever) revise anything. Most people who want to be writers start out this way. It almost has to start out this way. You have to find the courage to write and a willingness to dig into who you are.

But at some point, babbling incessantly about your life isn’t so therapeutic, especially when you want to write for people besides your counselor or your mom. People want solutions to their problems, but writing doesn’t seem to offer that. Or, if it does, we don’t know how to reveal those solutions.

What is interesting about writing is how similar it is to the actual working of our conscious mind. The mind is big (some say infinite) and there are plenty of places to wander, to hide, to run, to fly and to get lost. But as with writing, eventually you get tired of wandering all over the place and you want to go home. But where is that? This is where meditation comes in. Meditation is an exercise in finding home.

Most forms of meditation have you focus upon a particular object: it could be breathing, a mantra, a sacred image or this present moment. No matter what the object may be, at some point, your mind will wander off into other thoughts. Then you realize you have wandered off and come back to the point of focus. Most people who have just begun a meditation practice berate themselves for losing their center. If you are one of those people, know that the exercise of focusing upon an object, wandering away and then coming back to the center is meditation. You are teaching your mind how to find its way home. 

This is why meditation can be so beneficial to the writer who wants to evolve out of the primordial ooze of therapy. Whatever you may be writing, if it is for another human being’s reading enjoyment, there must be a center: an object of focus.  As with meditation, you are going to wander off from that object and eventually come back again. Readers are just like you and me. They have this huge mental landscape within them. They want to run around and play, but eventually they want to find home. This is why we read in the first place: whether it’s a how-to book or a bestselling novel. The objects, descriptions and journeys are different, but the basic exercise is the same.

Finding a focus to my writing gives me more confidence and direction in what I am saying. Writing on this blog or in forums has helped immensely because it gives me a reader (besides my mom). I have to consider where the center of my attention is, where I’m going to wander off, and how I’m going to get back… and if you even care about any of that. I still write rambling diatribes to no one, but I can’t think of anything more therapeutic than finding a purpose. 

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