As a writer, your mental focus—your capacity for attention—is one of your greatest resources.

The human capacity for attention is limited. On any given day, there are more demands on your attention than you can effectively handle. So if you’re going to write, you have to make a choice: What will you stop doing so you can save your attention for writing?

Choosing where you put your attention is always a powerful act. But before smartphones and addictive technology like the infinite scroll were invented, writers used to have access to more language-free time without having to actively make this decision.

I grew up in the 1980s and I wrote my first novel on a word processor when I was in high school. I was assigned my first email account in 1995 as a university undergrad. I got to live through the cultural transition from a pre-digital era to a digital one, which means that, like my fellow Gen-Xers, I am wired to understand both pre-digital and digital types of mental connectivity.

Living through this shift showed me that the way we think isn’t set in stone. Our brains can learn different modes of consciousness. This made me curious about the phenomenon of awareness, especially as it pertained to my creative writing. I practised paying attention to my attention, and found that the more I practised, the more I could understand, adapt, and tend to my state of mind by choice.

I really noticed this shift when I began communicating, socializing, and teaching online. It used to be that times of transition—taking the streetcar, standing in line at the grocery store, and sitting in waiting rooms—were moments when ideas would come to me most often. Now I find myself checking my phone whenever I have a spare second.

As a creative writing teacher, I work with a lot of people who struggle with distraction and attention burnout. This phenomenon has grown steadily since I started teaching in 2001. One writer I worked with admitted with sadness that she feared she was getting “dumber” as she got older, that her sentences weren’t as textured as they used to be. Another confessed that she was finding it difficult to focus when reading the longer essays she used to love. We’re writers! If we can’t focus enough to write and read, who can?

The answer is that we all need more white space in our lives—moments of clarity and calm that allow our creative curiosity to emerge.

We need time spent staring into middle distance. We need to admire tendrils of steam as they rise from a teacup, watch waves lap at the shore, listen to the wind move through tree branches. And we need time to do nothing at all.

Are you smirking right now? Wondering who has time to stare into space and listen to the wind?

I’m quite serious. When was the last time you gave yourself time to notice without purpose? When was the simple and undistracted act of being your main activity? (And no, watching a video of a cat playing piano doesn’t count.)

In fiction, poetry, and music, white space is used between scenes, images, and sound on purpose. The white space is a container for energetic reflection. It’s there to give you a moment to digest what just happened. To let the last word or sound ring out for effect. It’s an opportunity to pause, to make some sense of what has just finished, to get ready for what comes next. White space gives you permission to experience a moment in that moment.

As a writer, you value white space in your daily life for the same reasons. Empty time gives your mind the opportunity to process your thoughts, wonder about things you don’t know yet, see connections, and work through story problems.

Sarah Selecky runs the Sarah Selecky Writing School, a creative community of over 10,000 writers from around the world. She is the author of the novel Radiant Shimmering Light and a short story collection This Cake Is for the Party, which was a finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and the Commonwealth Prize for Best First Book in Canada and the Caribbean.

Sarah Selecky (Michelle Yee)

Excerpted from: Story Is a State of Mind: Writing and the Art of Creative Curiosity by Sarah Selecky. Copyright © 2025 Sarah Selecky. Published by Assembly Press. Reproduced by arrangements with the publisher. All rights reserved.

Story Is a State of Mind: Writing and the Art of Creative Curiosity publishes on January 7.