Margaret Moore on how to organize your writing life

JAN BROGAN - As you might have picked up by now, I love books about the brain and at the top of my most recent reading list is Organize Your Mind, Organize Your Life by Margaret Moore and Paul Hammerness, MD.

It's all about ways to keep focused in this world of non-stop distractions, how to keep your eyes on your own particular prize. A lot of the advice is useful for learning to reduce stress and live a healthy lifestyle, but I found it especially relevant to writing goals. Having run the writing challenges, I know how many other writers out there could use inspiration on how to ignore the distractions and stay focused, so I invited Margaret, also known as Coach Meg, to Jungle Red and she graciously agreed to visit.

She is is co-director of the Institute of Coaching at McLean Hospital, a founding advisor of the Institute of Lifestyle Medicine at Harvard Medical School and the founder and CEO of Wellcoaches Corporation. If you are lucky enough to hire Coach Meg for your executive coach, you pay top rates. Here, she gives us some of her advice for free.

Writers are the worst procrastinators and they also struggle with balancing their lives with writing and promotion, so I asked Coach Meg to explain one concept in the book that I found especially useful. It's called "focus time."

COACH MEG: Focus time (when you bring all of the brain’s attentional resrouces – top, down, back, front, right left – into the full spotlight of focus) is the most enriching and productive time of our days. It’s one of the top contributors to psychological well-being. Schedule at least one focus session per day where you set up the ideal conditions for a calm, positive, energetic, and creative mindset.

JAN: You not only need to schedule it. You need to guard it with your life! Writers are vulnerable to distraction. We talk a lot here at Jungle Red about the lure of email and the Internet and how it sidetracks us from our writing goals. Can you give us some of your tips for controlling the impulse to check email or surf the net?

COACH MEG: First notice when and how you are responding automatically to impulses – it happens frequently. Most effective approach is to turn off the wireless so no email or web is available. If you are waiting for an urgent message, tell your brain (Hello Brain, while we will scan email for the urgent message we are expecting, we will let go of any others that come along, all of which can wait until the end of the focus session.)

JAN_ Writers, or probably anyone who works at home, faces a lot of interruption in a day. I was fascinated by the concept of shift sets, and your advice to make conscious decisions when your day gets interrupted - how to capitalize on the interruption instead of resenting it. Can you give us an example?

COACH MEG: Scenario 1 – something urgent comes up, more pressing that what you’re doing now. Make a decision to shift completely to the new activity for a defined period, then perhaps shift back to the original period.

2. S Scenario 2 – your brain is tired and your productivity has slowed or stalled. Take a brain break. Save tasks like making a bed, cleaning out the dishwasher, putting in a load of laundry, making a quick call to set up an appt for your brain break times. Go exercise during brain breaks.

JAN: You talk a lot about mindfulness, what might the advantages of mindfulness training or practice be for a writers?

COACH MEG: In order for your mind to better “drive” your racing car brain, your mind needs to be awake and aware of what your mind and brain are both doing in any given moment. The ideal state is that your mind is objective (and not falling mindlessly into distraction or frenzy) and has an arms-length relationship with the brain’s automatic processes, noticing them and pausing to choose a response.

A mindful brain is a clean and healthy brain that can focus without distractions, be productive and creative, and make fewer errors. Other benefits include better immune system, decreased depression and chronic pain.

Experiment to find a meditation practice which works for you (you notice benefits in a week or two). There's also more on mindfulness and a meditation exercise to help clear the brain for work at my website www.organizeyourmind.com (under mindfulness tab).

JAN: Writers have to balance writing with promotion. Right now you must be doing the same thing, balancing book promotion with coaching your clients - do you have tricks that you can share?

COACH MEG: I monitor the state of my brain and body continually:

• Is it tired and needs a quick break, or a workout?

• Hungry or thirsty, needing a snack or meal with the right balance of protein/fat/carbs as optimal fuel, water or “antioxidants” (such as a bowl of berries)?

• Wanting some spontaneity – do anything you feel like for a short period?

• Needing to stretch to loosen muscle tension?

• Needing to connect with another human being?

I call this body intelligence and for more on why it's so important, click on this link: body intelligence .

JAN - Thanks, Coach Meg!! She will also be checking in today to answer questions, so fire away!

Elaine Johnson and what mystery writers should know about the brain...

HALLIE EPHRON: Our guest today, Elaine Johnson, started out as a teacher of serious literature (Shakespeare, Milton...), went on to become a college dean, and along the way became intrigued by the workings of the brain. After twenty years of research and lecturing on the brain, her book, “A Beginner’s Guide to the Brain: Major Discoveries that Will Change Your Life,” comes out today.

** And right here, on Jungle Red, we're giving away a copy of the book to one of today's commenters!

Coincidentally, a literature class Elaine is teaching right now focuses on our very own Julia Spencer-Fleming's work. Elaine, how did that happen?

ELAINE JOHNSON: It was requested, not surprisingly, by an Episcopal church as part of their education program. They chose all of Julia Spencer-Fleming’s books over Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale and The Tempest. I was happy with the choice because Julia’s treatment of the same characters through many books allows us to explore why mystery can be first-rate literature.

At the first meeting, it became evident that people welcome an opportunity to read mysteries. We agreed that after this term, we’ll survey a variety of modern mystery writers. Jungle Red provides a great foundation for a syllabus.

HALLIE: We're happy to hear that! So, what do you think it is about the human brain that makes us such suckers for mystery novels?

ELAINE: Certainly one reason the brain favors mystery novels is its deep, biological need to find meaning. Disturbed by unexplained events and randomness, the brain arbitrarily assigns them meaning. In its quest for meaning, it constantly searches for patterns and order. Murder mysteries satisfy the brain’s desire to make patterns, explain randomness, and in so doing find meaning.

HALLIE: Elaine, are there any discoveries or insights that would help us write more convincing villains.

ELAINE: Brain research suggests that convincing villains could be driven by deep emotion that blinds reason, a willingness to do anything to belong to a group it values, anger at being improperly valued—of losing status by being demeaned in some way--a desire to experience again and again the pleasurable feeling that is the brain’s reward whenever we do something it likes, and unwavering certainty that one’s beliefs are absolutely right, reasonable, and a reliable guide.

HALLIE: What about the mystery writer’s characters? Does the brain seem to prefer some kinds of characters over others?

ELAINE: Brain research suggests that three things especially incline the brain to like certain kinds of characters.

First, the need to belong: The brain is a social organ; it longs for and requires the company of other brains. When we do not belong—when we feel rejected, ignored, or reprimanded—we experience the same hurt that physical pain causes. Two brain regions respond to physical pain. The same two regions respond to social pain. This means that if the reader watches a protagonist who belongs--who has compassion or insight that connects her with others--then the reader will identify readily with that protagonist.

Second, mirror neurons: Mirror neurons cause us to identify with characters. These neurons have a unique double function. They fire when we do something—when we perform an action or feel an emotion, and they fire when we watch someone else perform an action or feel an emotion. Mirror neurons cause us to perform in our brain the action or feeling we observe. When we observe a protagonist think, feel, or act, our brain’s mirror neurons fire, linking us with that protagonist.

Third, morality: A moral sense is rooted in the design of the human brain. Genes dispose our brains to make moral distinctions. The brain’s innate disposition to judge human actions as either right or wrong, moral or immoral, helps explain the appeal of mystery novels. Mystery novels portray a moral universe where wrong-doing is punished. When bad guys are punished by protagonists they admire, the reader’s moral brain is happy.

HALLIE: That's so interesting -- I wonder if it also explains why we tend to be attracted to people (and dogs) that look like us!

And finally, how do you think mystery writers get it right about the way the brain works?

ELAINE: Mystery writers of drama and novels get a lot right. They have long intuited the things that brain research confirms.

They are especially good at recognizing that the brain is unreasonable. Research now proves that the brain is governed far more by emotion than reason. In fact, the brain so embraces emotion that it may adopt an idea for emotional reasons and then-- after the fact--look for reasons to justify that stand. Or it may ignore evidence that contradicts that stand. Emotion will trump reason.

Driven by emotion in the guise of reason, a person may in the name of religion or ideology hate entire groups, and that hatred can drive someone to attack any member of that group.

HALLIE: Reading Elaine's answers, I immediately want to know: are men's brains and women's brains wired differently? But maybe she'll tell us what she thinks in the comments.

Don't forget, we're giving away a book to one of today's commenters. Elaine will be checking back in today to answer questions and comments, so please, ask away! Don't forget, we'll be giving away a copy of the book to one randomly drawn commenter!