I was recently talking to a computer programmer friend and commiserating about the difficulty of focusing. As an editor who often spends hours and hours in front of a computer screen staring at words, I wanted to be able to focus better and for longer. As a computer programmer, my friend shared the same issue. When working on a project, whether it’s writing code or editing a book on engineering, distractions arise, specifically internal ones. Internal distractions can take many forms, like wandering thoughts, but we both agreed that the pull of the Internet (checking email, Facebook, etc.) was a big one. Then my friend introduced me to the Pomodoro Technique, which I admit at first sounded kind of hokey. But it is a popular technique among computer programmers, and now that I’ve started benefiting from it, I wonder if many other editors and writers use it as well.

Before describing the technique, I want to note that the discovery of the Pomodoro Technique came about around the same time that I reinstituted a practice of keeping Shabbat. For those unfamiliar with the concept, Shabbat is the day of rest in Judaism, based on the idea that God created the world in six days and rested on the seventh day. Shabbat starts Friday evening and ends Saturday evening. Traditionally, there’s a whole long list of categories of work that are forbidden on Shabbat. But some people choose to acknowledge the day in a modified way. My husband does a lot of computational work as part of his research for his PhD, and he was finding himself burnt out. He knew that I used to keep Shabbat years ago, and suggested we try to do so together (he’s also an atheist, and isn’t Jewish, which I think is a great example of the appeal of Shabbat for many of us in the modern world, regardless of belief system).

We agreed to do a modified form of Shabbat, a “no-screens” Shabbat, in which we simply refrain from using phones (particularly Smart phones), computers, and TV. In just a few weeks we’ve already gotten into the rhythm of the practice and are enjoying a much-needed day of relaxation once a week: eating a home cooked dinner, seeing friends, reading, playing board games, napping, taking walks. It’s really simple and really effective.

The Pomodoro Technique (created by Francesco Cirillo in 1992) functions similarly to Shabbat: it, too, is based on the notion of the rhythm between work and rest. The foundation of the technique is quite simple: You work on a task, say, editing a chapter of a thesis, for twenty-five minutes, then take a three to five minute break. Then you resume either the same task for twenty-five minutes, or move on to another one based on priority. (The technique has a bit more to it than that, though the bare bones described above are enough to get started. I highly recommend this book, which explicates the details of the technique and its benefits further.)

I am already seeing the benefits of this technique after a few weeks of practice: my ability to focus is improving in a profound way. The brain really gets trained to the cycle of focus and rest. I spend my five minutes of rest simply absorbing the information I just worked on, or relaxing with a quick game or a gaze out the window or a stretch/walk for five minutes. When I come back to the task, and I’m “in the Pomodoro” (as practitioners call it), I really feel a difference in my level of focus. Before I began using this technique, I would take breaks at will, but sometimes after working for two hours straight or sometimes just ten minutes. The regularity of the twenty-five-minute set is much more sustainable.

It’s a lot like the twenty-five hour period of Shabbat, but in microcosm.

I have yet to try this practice for my writing (well, except for right now, as I’m writing this blog post “in a Pomodoro”!). But I imagine it could be an excellent technique, particularly for novelists, essay writers, and bloggers.

I would love to hear from other editors or writers who use this technique or think they might benefit from it. Does it work for you, in practice or in theory? Why or why not? How do you train yourself to focus better? Please discuss in the comments.

1. What is the title of your project?

My project is a brand new literary gathering that I’ve launched. It’s called The Red Sofa Salon & Poetry Workshop. It will take place twice a month at my home in West Philadelphia, replete with homemade vegetarian food and a supportive environment for discussing poems.

2. Where did the idea for this project come from?

The Red Sofa is an actual red sofa. It was the first (and only, so far!) sofa my husband and I bought when we moved in together back in Brooklyn, where we originally met. We got the sofa at a Macy’s furniture outlet on Long Island (for a great price!). The sofa quickly became a favorite of friends and guests, who would sometimes languish for hours at our apartment in cushiony bliss.

3. Who and/or what inspired you to create this project?

After I graduated from the MFA program at Sarah Lawrence in 2007, I started hosting informal poetry workshops in my apartment (and at friends’ homes) with fellow alumni. The workshops always involved homemade food, wine, cheese, and crackers. But more importantly the workshops were a chance to share new poems in a safe and supportive environment with a trusted group of readers and friends. Loosely based on a traditional MFA workshop format, we offered both praise and critique, highlighting what was working in a poem and what could be tweaked/revised.

When I moved to Philadelphia, I quickly set up shop as a freelance editor. Most of my days include revising, commenting on, and querying the carefully chosen words of scientists, anthropologists, philosophers, musicologists, and even poets and memoirists. But I often miss those workshops in New York, and the idea for establishing a salon and poetry workshop here in Philadelphia began to evolve in the back of my mind. Finally, in 2013, I decided to take the plunge and make this vision a reality.

4. What’s your workshop philosophy/style?

My philosophy is that we learn best how to write by reading. That’s why I structured the workshop to include an hour of discussing published poems. We will look closely at poems we admire and discuss how the poet achieved what they did, and what lessons we can glean from these poems to use for our own writing practice. I will offer optional writing exercises that emerge from the poems we read, for poets who need a little spark to get their writing going. We’ll spend the second hour workshopping poems in a fairly traditional workshop style. My perspective as an editor both of academic and literary work is always to pay close attention. To me, paying close attention as a poet means having both razor sharp vision and a finely attuned ear for the musicality of language. We can train ourselves to look at poems this way, and I believe as poets we must always do so in order to hone our craft.

5. Why did you choose to offer this workshop at your home?

The red sofa in my living room is the physical and metaphorical focal point of the workshop. Physically, it’s quite comfortable. Metaphorically, I wanted to create a space that is safe and supportive for our work as poets. Sharing poems, especially fledgling drafts, is sometimes a scary and vulnerable act; but our poems deserve the attention and feedback that can come from a great workshop. I think having the workshop at home makes it a more welcoming environment for this important work that we do.

6. Why food and poetry?

Why not? I remember back at Barnard College as an undergrad I used to attend poetry readings in Sulzberger Parlor. The room itself is really fancy looking, with oil paintings on the wall and old furniture. And they always served wine, cheese, cookies, and fruit at those poetry readings. Aside from enjoying the free food in college (sometimes wine and cheese was my dinner!), it also created this strangely elevated ambiance. It felt special to be at the poetry reading, to be fed delicious food. There was this feeling of sustenance as I tasted the flaky crackers and strawberries. It felt like poetry could be an equal kind of sustenance as well.

I have picked the following writer to respond to this blog next week:

I tend to be fearful of spamming people with my own announcements, so I hope that my natural hesitancy has allowed me to avoid some of those aforementioned faux pas. The dilemma that many writers face is that we learn quickly that we must become friends with self-promotion if we want our work to be read––not even sold to the masses, but just read. Part of the advantage of being a poet is that, at least for me, it’s engendered a sort of “purist” attitude toward self-promotion, particularly using social media for self-promotion, and particularly measuring success in the sale of books. I’m sure folks will see me as way too much of a purist to be offering any kind of useful advice, but in my own defense I was so glad that the blogger of the above mentioned post said the following:

“I think authors have probably learned their most irritating habits from ‘marketing gurus’ who tell them they’ll make more money if they’re just ‘bold’ enough to use social media ‘like an expert.’ ”

I sighed with relief when I read that statement. When I first joined Twitter and started perusing some of the advice for writers spinning around the Internet, I found the proliferation of advice on using social media for book marketing to be somewhat panic inducing. In a way, I almost think advice in that vein is meant to be alarmist in nature: as a writer, you are taught that you must take marketing into your own hands (which is true), but then you must follow all these rules, keep up with so much information, and make worrying about your use of social media part of your job. At least, that’s how I felt when I encountered such advice.

I do not like being pandered to by so-called marketing gurus. I take my advice from other gurus, and that advice usually teaches me to process information in mindful way. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t market ourselves as writers, but we should do so mindfully. And it’s not that we should be above the idea of selling books, but that we shouldn’t see ourselves as marketing machines. If I have written something that I think matters, I will try to share it with the world in the various channels available to me at this particular historical/technological moment. But that is not my agenda as a person who communicates in writing. My agenda is to put what I love out into the world, whether that is my own work or that of others (through my lit journal or promotion of writers I admire).

If I had to add my own small drop of advice to the sea, I would say a good dose of self-awareness and integrity should be a part of any marketing campaign. We are not trying to trick people into buying books, but to share what is good. I think social media can be used for that kind of good, if we remind ourselves to take our finger off the panic button, and remember why we are writing in the first place.

As a writer and an editor, I’m on both sides of coin. My work as an editor both professionally and for my literary journal sharpens my critical eye, which can be very helpful for my writing. There are times, though, when the editor in me gets in the way of the writer in me. I start composing the draft of a poem and can’t get past the first few lines cause I’ve already backtracked and started editing. This applies to my essay writing as well, which has tended to be slow and careful. That may not be a bad thing, but I know there is a certain amount of freedom that comes from simply allowing oneself to create that first draft, without judging. In a way, hesitantly allowing myself to publish my own blog is my way of offering myself that invitation to freedom. Without confining myself to a particular topic, without desperately hoping to get a book deal or a mass audience, I can return to the roots of my writing process.

Sometimes we feel the need for the approval of others to feel worthy of the work we do. The guest blog is one way to achieve that, and getting published in a venue one admires is a great ego boost. But blogging right here, at my own lonely blog, with the self-publish “button” so temptingly close to my fingers, is a scary thing. It means that I’m trusting myself to say what I have to say, and to provide a space for my words in this world. It means that the stamp of approval is my own, as I hover over the keys and hesitate before I click “publish.”

So with that in mind, I want to start blogging. The trend these days is to have a theme to your blog. People like themes. It makes sense, especially if you want to drive traffic to your website and get business, I’m told (though there is nothing appealing to me about the metaphor of traffic, and the idea of writing to make money, is, well, something that has never concerned me as a poet). One of the reasons I’ve never started a blog is because I don’t have a theme. I thought about starting a poetry blog, an editing blog, an art blog, a personal blog… and I am not invested enough in the idea of narrowing myself down to one theme, as though it’s imperative to brand oneself. But, clearly, I have thoughts. And some people out there like to read them, even when I think they aren’t polished enough to be out in the world, shivering in the cold on an empty field in the middle of the Internet.

So I’m going to start this blog, without the promise of a theme, without the promise of posting every single day, and without the goal of getting tons of traffic. In fact, if it’s only read by a few curious souls, that’s almost better. That’s how I always envisioned the audience for my poetry, anyhow. There are probably just a small minority of quirky folks in the world who will get it and love it, and you are my audience, and I am writing for you. I look forward to seeing where this new journey takes me. I invite you to come along and follow my wandering thoughts…