Monkey mind—

According to Wikipedia, “a Buddhist term meaning unsettled, restless, capricious, whimsical, fanciful …” According to me, a term meaning the deluge of ideas for stories I could be writing that invades my brain when I sit down to write the story I should be writing.

My Gethsemane Brown series is set in a fictional modern-day Irish village and stars an African-American classical musician and the ghost of a murdered composer. So, of course, when I take pen in hand or set fingers to keyboard I think,

“Hey, I could write a story set in post-World War Two London about an American hotel guest who teams up with the hotel detective to solve a murder.”

Or,

“How about a story set in nineteen-thirties Paris about an American art collector who’s secretly helping Jews escape from the Nazis?”

Or even,

“I know; I’ll write about a woman who has an affair with her brother-in-law then has to prove her husband innocent of his murder.” (That last one’s definitely not a cozy.)

None of which have anything to do with the task at hand: finish the next Gethsemane Brown manuscript.

How do I fight monkey mind? I don’t. Fighting monkey mind makes me anxious to the point of inertia. In the words of the borg, “Resistance is futile.” I’ve learned through experience (and a tip from Chris Baty in No Plot, No Problem) monkey mind must be accommodated. Instead of trying to ignore the flood of brilliant ideas for the next runaway bestseller I scribble the ideas down. I keep several small notebooks and a variety of pens handy. Whenever an idea unrelated to my current manuscript pops into my head I jot the idea in a notebook, take a deep refocusing breath, and get back to work. Acknowledging the intrusion seems to sate whatever dark recess of my brain is playing tricks on me.

As a bonus I have a catalog in case anyone ever asks, “What else have you got?” I can flip to a page in a notebook and say, “I’ve got this great idea about a hotel detective …”

How do you tame monkey mind?