You’re Thinking Too Much!

Ever notice on the days you hem and haw over an article, your head suffers and your writing suffers too?

And the pieces you don’t sweat to pieces are your best ones?

Weird how that works isn’t it?

I find it amazing that the weather is less consistent than this extraordinary fact. I could spend hours, days, weeks pouring out my soul to molding ideas into words and words into a story. I put it aside. Unhappy with it, I rework again. And again. And again. And when it’s finished I’m shaking silly, drained, brainless.  Then I offer it on a plate and like the waiter in Sedona who embarrassingly rejected my request to take a picture of my husband and I, it’s pushed to the side.

But the ones that came from a spontaneous burst of inspiration? Those you like.

I asked award-winning writer Sophia Dembling about it. She’s one of our beautiful Psych Central bloggers who writes about Real World Research. And recently she’d dug up some interesting finding on performance and overthinking.

Here’s what she had to say:

“Research on athletes shows that the more they think, the worse they perform and I think that applies to writing, too. I can really get in my own way if I think too much while I’m writing a first draft. I’m much better off doing my thinking before starting to string words together. Then I have an image in my head of what the story will look like and can just spin the tale. If I’m writing an article, I’ll often read through my notes, then put them aside to write the first draft. Writing without notes helps me home in on what’s actually important and not get tangled up in trivia.”

Although she says, perfect pieces don’t usually form this way, you can get enough to work with. “It’s like sculpting a bust of someone. First you form your clay into the rough shape. Then, you work it and work it and work it—smoothing, and cutting away, and adding here and there—until it resembles the person. Or, in this case, the piece you envisioned when you sat down to write that first draft.”

Kind of like what I did. The difference? Dembling says, “Sometimes I’m so unhappy with my first draft that I put it aside and try to start over. Invariably, I end up going back to my original version and revise that until I’m happy.”

The real test to find out if you’re thinking too much? If you find yourself consistently starting over, you can bet your bottom dollar that you’re overthinking.