Focus, please!

FOCUS!

A simple word, used as a noun or a verb, but with several applications either way.

The Oxford American Dictionary defines it:

n. 1) the point or distance at which an object is most clearly seen through a lens or by the eye.  2) a center of activity or interest.

v. 1) to bring into focus 2) to concentrate or be concentrated or directed (on  center, etc.)

I don’t know about you, but I go through times when I seem to have a maddening lack of ability to focus! Sometimes, it’s just my eyes; I’m not as young as I used to be, and it seems that as the years go by I prefer larger items on which to fix my gaze. Fortunately, this is a problem corrected with new eyeglasses.

The other kind of focus, the whole “concentrate or direct on center...” well, that is another issue altogether.

Take the past few weeks, for example. I have been writing... a lot! But my efforts have definitely lacked focus. I am currently working on four different novels.  (Five if you consider the brand new one that is attempting to be born, banging around in the back of my skull with restless glee. I have a theory that my chronic migraines are caused by the labor pains of these potential new babies, but that is a subject for another day.)

There, see? Four short paragraphs into this blog and already I lost focus and went off on a tangent!

Yes, this is where Rainie gets her tendency to be thinking odd and usually inappropriate thoughts all the time, when she probably ought to be concentrating on the situation at hand. Too often someone thinks I am paying close attention to their explanation of something (important or not, makes no difference) when in actuality my mind is a thousand miles or subjects away, racing down the autobahn of my subconscious with a full tank of gas and no brakes.

On occasion, if what I was supposed to be listening to is of real importance, I will stop the speaker and say, “I’m sorry, could you repeat that? I forgot to listen.”

Okay, yes, that is very rude, and truly, I rarely say it. Usually once I come back to the moment I can pick up the general gist of what was being said with a few well-placed questions, such as asking for a particular detail (time, place, whatever) to be repeated, and I can fill in the rest from there. It’s sort of how you figure out the meaning of a word you don’t know by the context in which it is used.

Of course, I am not always so unfocused. The thing is, I tend to be an all or nothing kind of woman, so what will happen (soon, I hope) is one morning I will open one of those multiple projects, type a word or two... and then not stop for hours. Eight, nine, twelve hours... it’s hard to say. I won’t stop to eat, and barely stop to relieve my bladder, and before I know it, another one of my babies has matured and is ready to go out on its own.

Right now, I have people cheering for the fifth book of the Rainie Series, the fourth book of the Red Wolf Series, and the sequel to “Shadow.” But I am leaning toward a rewrite on “Shattered World,” the very first novel I ever wrote. I don’t know which one will finally claim my full attention first.

Or maybe it will be the still unborn...

I’ll let you know, as soon as I focus.