WOW! Women On Writing Blog: chores

Friday Speak Out!: I Don’t Write in the Kitchen!

Friday, January 29, 2016

by Claudia Mundell

Food…an issue for writers who are wives and mothers too. Does James Patterson have to set a timer so he doesn’t forget to tend scalloped potatoes in the oven while he writes? Does Nora Roberts tie a string on her pointer finger as a reminder to boil the spaghetti? Every writer knows how muddled her mind becomes during interrupted inspiration and creation, how the house could burn down as she thinks the smoke is just from her blazing hot love scene on the computer screen.

Food at my house is a complex issue due to diabetes and Crohn’s disease. Since certain foods are prohibited, prepared food can have an abundance of both sugar and salt, and throwing a sandwich on the table every day is not permissible, I have to plan ahead for meals. That means having a well-stocked kitchen, allowing a stretch of day for chopping, dicing, cooking, and plating….oh, and cleaning up! All that takes time and when a scene is racing through my head, I can’t always stop and get it written down. The nature of intense and roiling ideas isn’t always to wait for me!

This winter I am trying a new plan. I take one day to ignore writing completely and devote it to cooking and make enough for leftovers to last the week. Thankfully, hubby isn’t too discriminating and doesn’t object to repeated foods…for a week at a time. A huge pot of soup on Sunday will last until the next weekend. Soup with crackers, soup with cheese sticks, or then the last of the soup vegetables ladled over rice. A large old fashioned meatloaf added to an oven full of baked potatoes with serve again as rewarmed meat and chopped baked potatoes pan fried. At the end of the week, a meat loaf sandwich is so good. Even baked oatmeal with fruit can be warmed in a microwave getting one or two extra easy meals. Cooks and writers get the idea.

The idea is to have food that can be thrown on the table, eaten and the mess picked up fast. Knowing ahead that the meals are at least semi-prepared allows my mind to concentrate on stories and poems the other days. My day isn’t chewed up by cooking chores or the resentment of doing them. I have some extra minutes, even hours, built into my week.

When the writing goes well, maybe a story is not only finished but submitted, I treat both myself and hubby for his patience. We leave kitchen and office behind and step out for a meal. If I’m lucky, even enough leftovers will remain to bring home in Styrofoam boxes…the beginning for tomorrow’s meal. He thinks dining out is for treat or reward. Only I know it is writing research: people-watching and eavesdropping to gather sights and sounds for a whole new story idea!

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Claudia Mundell loved words when she first met them. Reading and writing were keys to the world outside of Southeastern Kansas. She started collecting snippets of great thoughts as early as third grade, was writing poetry by fourth grade, and never stopped putting thoughts to paper.
Writing is both work and hobby. It is satisfying to work hard on a piece, to bring it to creative completion. Once into a story, it is hard to leave and come back to the real world cooking and cleaning. Her other hobbies are knitting, reading, collecting Blue Willow dishes, and drinking good tea.

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Would you like to participate in Friday "Speak Out!"? Email your short posts (under 500 words) about women and writing to: marcia[at]wow-womenonwriting[dot]com for consideration. We look forward to hearing from you!
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7 comments chores, Claudia Mundell, food and writing, Friday Speak Out, the writing life

Queen of Multitasking

Sunday, May 01, 2011

I'm writing this article, watching TV, talking on the phone and drinking my coffee. I've always done more than one thing at a time. I believe myself to be the Queen of Multitasking. In fact, it's hard for me to only do individual tasks. Just the other day I was scanning the aisles of Walmart, reading my shopping list and talking on the phone. To my friend I said, "Lettuce." She asked, "Let us what?"
People can't multitask very well, and when people say they can, they're deluding themselves," said neuroscientist Earl Miller. He said, "The brain is very good at deluding itself.
You're not paying attention to one or two things simultaneously, but switching between them very rapidly."
At a lab at the University of Michigan, researchers are using an MRI scanner to photograph test subjects' brains as they perform different tasks. Two red items were shown to the man, so his brain searched for which one was larger. Then the subject was shown a green item; the brain had to decide which item was more important. The MRI showed the brain pausing before responding. It had to store information about the red item and search for what information it had stored about green items before deciding to focus on the green.

Miller says, "Part of the brain that does this is called the "executive system." It's a bit like one of those cartoon conductors telling the orchestra: louder, softer, faster, slower. You come in here. You be quiet for a few measures."

Peter Bregman tells about a study which showed that people distracted by incoming email and phone calls saw a 10-point fall in their IQs. What's the impact of a 10-point drop? The same as losing a night of sleep. More than twice the effect of smoking marijuana.
Doing several things at once is a trick we play on ourselves, thinking we're getting more done. In reality, multitasking slows our productivity down by as much as 40%. We don't actually multitask. We switch-task, rapidly shifting from one thing to another, interrupting ourselves unproductively, and losing time in the process.
We need to learn to do one thing at a time. Otherwise, we are putting too much stress on our brains, and this keeps us from concentrating on what we are doing. If we devote more energy to doing the single task at hand, we will have more energy to finish that task.
How not to multitask is a difficult task. Realization that you need to channel your focus is your beginning. It is better to set aside small chunks of time to work on a task then to do several things at one time and not finishing any of them in a timely or efficient fashion.

Some multitasking is inevitable:

Bouncing baby on your hip as you fix dinner.
Yelling at kids while driving.
Playing fetch with Fido while reading a novel.
Tending to Farmville while talking (texting) on the phone.

Multitasking is not thinking of one thing and doing another. My mind works out many plot problems while I'm sweeping the living room. Multitasking is doing one thing and then switching, to another task and then coming back to the first.
To finish this blog, I turned off the TV and hung up the phone. I finished it in half the time it normally takes me to write a blog. I am less stressed—okay, I am still somewhat stressed—over the tasks that I need to accomplish before the day ends, but I feel good about my accomplishments so far today.
What multitasking chores do you do at the same time? How does this effect your writing? Would you have less stress if you concentrated on only one at a time?

Resources:
Photo Queen: http://www.librarising.com
Photo Conductor: http://www.thestarpress.com