The Broken Window of Writing

Imagine a building with one broken window. The owner decides to board it up instead of replacing it, then when another window gets broken it is left without repair. Soon enough the building is littered with maintenance issues and is left in disarray. Other buildings follow suit and the neighborhood slowly deteriorates.

This is what is called the broken window theory, and it was introduced by social scientists James Q. Wilson and George Kelling in a 1982 article published in The Atlantic entitled "Broken Windows: The Police and Neighborhood Safety." Although the window theory originated in criminology and has been highly contested, we can still use this framework in understanding why things left undone in writing can lead to other problems, causing a person to not be able to finish their work.

There is an unconscious factor that occurs when problems in a manuscript are left unresolved that leads to other parts of the manuscript not being finished. Let's say we come to a paragraph that needs additional research and we leave part of the paragraph bracketed and a citation blank. The likelihood of coming back to fill in the citation causes not only the paragraph to seem less valuable, but the whole chapter as well. Soon one blank becomes a whole bunch of blanks and the work becomes neglected like the building.

This becomes mental clutter, and like physical clutter, when left untouched, it piles up. Right now the side table by my bed contains a host of things that need to be put somewhere else. There is a zip-lock bag of Legos, a microfiber towel for my glasses, another pair of glasses, a blister pack of RAM chips from a notebook computer dated 2015, a pile of random sticky notes, electric cords for God knows what, and the ubiquitous pile of receipts. But if this side table makes anyone's skin crawl, you can imagine the state of our bedroom right now. This is not how it normally is, but after a few items were left out it was easy to avalanche to this.

After I finish this article, I will deal with this mess so that other messes can be slowly dealt with. I used to live in the apartment house of a family, and the man would often say, "I'm getting sick of looking at this" and actually do something about the messes he saw around the house. He did keep a tidy place, and it was a real blessing living with them since I learned this one thing that I did not learn from my parents. We can apply this as writers to our craft.

When there are issues that need to be resolved and editorial problems that are left lingering and the writer avoids these issues so that they could move on, these small problems become major blocks and barriers. So resolving them becomes the writer's first task to make the work easier.

The point here is to tell the unconscious that the work is important enough for your attention, time, and energy. Neglecting even the smallest part signals that the entire work is not good enough to deserve one's devotion. It is like not clipping your toenails, then deciding your fingernails don't need to be trimmed either, and soon enough wearing bleach-stained shirts and threadbare underwear becomes the norm.

Tell your manuscript that it is important by doing the smaller decluttering work first and then see how the rest of the work falls into place. What are the broken windows in your work?

Happy writing.

We are doing a free webinar on Monday, June 16, 6:00-7:30 PM CT. This will be an amazing time where we will help you get your manuscript to a place where you want it to be.