Some of you may be taking part in National Poetry Writing Month, which has a week to go, and if so, I hope it is going well for you. Confession time here, I’ve managed to get a line down for every day so far but that’s about it…BUT prompts from the organizers themselves and various bloggers are great and it’s focussed my mind on focus.

This was amplified through an afternoon masterclass from Lovebrain from University College London, all about our brains, attention and focus. There was much here to help we writers seeking focus including these ideas:

Questions, Distractions and the Present

Our brains take in stimuli from our senses, extract information, process and understand this via words and key words, and then link this information to existing information, in order to store it – and learn. This linking of information takes places most effectively via questions. So our writing so far may be based on the quality and quantity of the questions we’ve been asking…Our brains deserve and will respond to great questions.

If we see our focus of attention as a torch, how are we operating it? Are we switching it about from subject to subject, keeping it directed on one interest, choosing to have a wide beam or one that is more laser like? We’ll operate this torch most effectively via concentration, clarity, defined interest and eliminating distractions. Writing down distractions on pieces of paper, then throwing them away may help, as recent research shows.

When our attention focuses too much on the past, and negative events there, we may encourage depressed thoughts. When we do the same with the future and dread possibilities there , we may encourage anxious thoughts. We can help how we focus considerably by practising focus in the present. A most useful warm up just before writing is to do 5-4-3-2-1: identify 5 things you can see, 4 things you can touch, 3 things you can hear, 2 things you can smell, and 1 thing you can taste. Don’t rush this grounding exercise and please experiment with writing straight away after it. And happy to hear if it helps.

While not keeping my torch beam of focus too wide here, I wanted to give you two other ideas on this subject of focus before finishing. Gillian Mcallister is a Sunday Times and New York Times bestselling author, who describes her most focussed approach to novel writing on her Instagram grid. A month planning, then 40 days of 2000 words a day approximately, with two further revisions, using Excel or Apple spreadsheets. Very tempted to try this…it certainly works for Gillian.

And finally, here’s a success story local to me, where focus on subject and fun has proved irresistible to readers. Anne Cakebread is an illustrator who had the idea of combining language learning ( Welsh to start off with, definitely a minority interest) with pets ( majorly popular). Here’s the result, a delightful example of local and most specific focus getting global reach. May you feel the focus, too.