Blogger: Rachelle Gardner
“The best time for planning a book is when you’re doing the dishes.” -Agatha Christie
Lately I’ve been thinking about the importance of the menial, everyday tasks in our lives, and how they provide wonderful opportunities to let our minds loose to roam, explore, and process.
We live in such a noisy world. Whenever we’re driving or folding laundry or jogging, it’s tempting to always have our iPods or cell phones in our ears, or the TV or radio on in the background.
But I’ve become more aware of the importance of allowing our minds to be free once in awhile. We can create silence—when our hands are busy—so that we can hear our own thoughts, so that ideas can form, so that our subconscious can help us solve problems, so that we can hear the voice of God. I believe that when we constantly have “input” into our brains in the form of music or voices, we rob ourselves of the crucial processing time our minds need in order to be creative and access all of our intelligence.
I’m not talking about dedicated prayer or meditation time, which is important in its own right. I’m talking about doing the dishes, walking the dog. Cleaning out the car or driving to work. Hiking or riding a bike. Times when our hands and bodies are busy doing something that doesn’t require our entire brain’s worth of concentration. These times can be valuable “free space” for our minds. We can enter them with no agenda except to have no agenda. We can get used to the solitude and eventually come to appreciate the riches found in the quiet.
One of my favorite books is The Quotidian Mysteries by Kathleen Norris. In it, she encourages us to treasure rare moments of solitude and silence and to avoid distracting ourselves with television and the like. The menial tasks of life, she says, can be “islands of holiness” in an otherwise chaotic and noisy life. This has been hard for me to get used to. I’m constantly downloading podcasts from iTunes and audiobooks from Audible. But I’m trying to spend more time in silence.
If you are a writer, then these times are important for you. Your brain needs open space to create, to solve plot and character problems, to clarify your position on an issue you’re exploring in your writing, to come up with just the right word for that problematic sentence you’ve struggled with.
Do you need to start looking at your daily “quotidian” tasks in a new light? Or are you already there? If you’re not, perhaps you can join me in seeing those moments as a gift from God, a time to allow the silence and discover its treasures.
What will you find there?
Andrew Budek-Schmeisser
GREAT post, Rachelle, and I am going to ask an even larger share of forgiveness for being contrarian…
* The moments to which we think we need only commit part of our thoughts are actually those which deserve our full attention, because they’re the one’s that define us far more than our dreams and fantasies ever can.
* HOW you walk a dog is far more important than the insights you may have; the manner in which you do the dishes will inform your writing more than anything you may conjure up in what you are thinking of as ‘dead time’.
* The stories and their details will come in our subconscious (and we must have a measure of faith in that), but they can only by fully informed by fully embracing and living the life which we have been given.
Andrew Budek-Schmeisser
I could have saved a lot of verbiage by saying –
“Mindfulness of my moments motivate my muse.”
Sarah Bennett
All hail alliterations! 🙂
Rachelle Gardner
Love your insights, Andrew. This is exactly how mindfulness works. Thank you for pointing it out.
Nicholas Faran
I am already there. I do not own an ipod, have few TV programmes that I watch regularly, am not signed up to anything Netflix and the like. I sometimes even switch off the radio in the car or have on classic FM. It was while driving to work one morning when I noticed the crisp chilled sunrise and gave me the spark for my novel.
Rachelle Gardner
Wonderful! Sounds like you discovered mindfulness all on your own.
Shirlee Abbott
I have a long commute–2 hrs daily–and I have long conversations with God. Writing is one of the topics we cover. It works for me (doing dishes or dusting, not so much).
Rachelle Gardner
Yes, commuting is certainly the perfect time for that! Sounds like you’re putting that car-time to good use.
Michele Weisman
Thank you for this reminder. I have gotten up early today to work in silence and what did I do? Turn on music.
Rachelle Gardner
I think most of us do that out of habit – for instance, I get up and switch on NPR. But sometimes I remind myself to bask in the silence for a while.
Jeanne Takenaka
Great post, Rachelle. I appreciate your honesty. I sometimes find it hard to just enjoy silence as well. Often, when I walk, I have the quiet. I pray or let my mind wander. In the car, I often listen to something—an audiobook or a podcast or the radio. When I’m doing stuff around the house, I usually have silence . . . unless one of my boys is helping. 🙂
*I definitely like the idea of creating islands of holiness in my days. I want to be more intentional about doing this.
Rachelle Gardner
I find it takes both and intention, and constant reminders! I first read The Quotidian Mysteries more than ten years ago, but I still have to remind myself to allow the silence.
Lara Hosselton
Music is a major creative influence for me. I often listen to a particular band in order to set the mood for a chapter I’m working on. Other times I need silence. I’ll even wear my Bose headsets just to block distracting background noise, like my husband yelling at the TV (it’s SEC football season.)
*I’ve always preferred to walk the neighborhood without my iPod. I do a lot of soul searching and praying and I also like being able to hear what’s going on around me. It’s safer. On a treadmill I need music to break the monotony because five minutes can seem like fifty-five.
Rachelle Gardner
I’m with you on the difference between treadmill and outdoor walking! I can walk the neighborhood or local mountain trails in silence – but not the treadmill! 😉
Shelli Littleton
Yes, thanks for this reminder to be in the moment and use everything at our disposal to aid our writing world. 🙂 It’s so true, ideas come when we least expect them. And just looking for unique views on the mundane chores can be good writing material. That’s what ensures success on Shark Tank … they find a solution to the things most people just put up with. If we can hone in on those tiny things, it just adds flavor to our stories, through laughter or tears. Don’t resent the years of dishes, use the task to reach your wishes. 🙂 I needed this.
Rachelle Gardner
Love your rhyme, Shelli, and I might start using it to remind myself!
Jennifer Zarifeh Major
Ahhh, the mundane.
We got home Friday night from 3 weeks away, on a road trip. Our 18 year old got home Thursday, from 2 weeks away.
He and 2 buddies went cycling around Iceland. (Yes, ICELAND!)
Thus, I’ve been doing laundry since Saturday. Yes,it is Wednesday. I only have one load left!!
Thankfully, Ice-Boy did his own laundry when he got home.
One thing that results from a mountain range of laundry is folding all those clothes. Folding? Nope.
Holding.
Holding their favourite shirts and trying not to cry because that shirt just won’t fit much longer. Because the 13 year old is actually wider in the shoulders than his 22 year old tree of a brother.
Finding a Spiderman Under Armour shirt that Faraway Son must have left in someone’s suitcase by accident, and now you have a piece of him that he’ll want back, but you won’t see him until maybe February. But you can still hold him. And cry. Because he wears that Spiderman shirt under his work clothes. So maybe you should mail it.
Then you pick up a mangled pair of brand new shorts. The hole is gaping, because he tore it open when a fishing lure went rogue. But, oh, the story!! Sadly, he’s wearing his only other decent pair of shorts TO WORK, and those shorts have a stain created by a splattering of fish guts on one leg. What man would want that stain washed out? Not mine.
The mundane task of laundry is only that if the memories are forgotten. Then again, there’s nothing mundane about WHY and HOW boys can turn brand new white socks into grey blobs of ick, in one day!!!
Shelli Littleton
I’m swiping away the goosebumps!! 🙂 Sweetness.
Rachelle Gardner
Those are some pretty deep thoughts about laundry. Love it! 😉
Hannah
I see these mundane tasks as gifts from the Lord, offered in wisdom and love. They seem mindless, but they can be the key to sanity, secret spaces where the brain heaves a sigh of relief. I know that if I’m feeling reluctant to embrace silence and repetition when it’s offered, there’s usually something “off” in my spirit–and it’s time to explore what that might be. Usually it means I’m running from something scary or hard or sad.
Rachelle Gardner
Oh boy, we all want to run from our own thoughts and feelings sometimes, don’t we? It can be hard to sit with them. That’s why we need reminders. I do, anyway.
Julia Roller
The Quotidian Mysteries is also one of my favorites! Such a great reminder of the value in the everyday rhythms of life. I always get great writing ideas in the shower or when I’m on a walk, and you’re so right–it is hard to resist the temptation to listen to music or an audio book, but when I can do that, I find I am so grateful for the silence and the time with God. Thanks for this post!
Rebecca Barlow Jordan
Rachel, I love your post. Some of my best ideas come from these kind of moments–walking, listening to children or grandchildren, doing household chores. While this is slightly different and doesn’t refer to when book ideas come, the idea is the same: hallowed moments often come when we are on “kitchen duty.” At least it did for Stephen in the book of Acts, and for Brother Lawrence in the 16th century. I wrote a devotion years ago in one of my books that talked about the “God of Kitchen Duty.” I thought some might be encouraged by it, so I included a link on the cbn site that used it soon after this particular book was published. Link is: http://bit.ly/2c7J9X1 I hope it’s helpful.
Darlene L. Turner
Thanks for this post, Rachelle! I find when I’m trying to figure out something in my manuscript, turning “off” my brain is the best way to spark ideas. Doing dishes is a great way to do it (if you like to do dishes, that is!). Going for a walk is definitely another good way. Cleaning out closets can declutter your novel and house. LOL. It’s then when the creative juices start to flow! Thanks for your insight on this.
Brenda Koinis
What a great post! In our culture of constant input, times of silence often come only by deliberate choice. But what a payoff! Sometimes peace, sometimes prayer, sometimes a string of thoughts that send me running for a notepad. (Thank goodness for that tiny moleskin booklet that fits inside my purse!)
Richard Mabry
Rachelle, before Cynthia died we planned to retire to the acreage we’d purchased outside the metroplex. Part of my routine was jumping on my John Deere mower and taking care of a part of the area every week, and it was while sitting on that riding mower, ear plugs blocking out every sound–not just the motor–that I had some of my most peaceful moments. I don’t wash dishes, I don’t do windows, and I no longer mow…but I agree with what you’ve said here.