Category: On Writing

On Writing: Where Do I Begin?

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Begin at the beginning.

Select an idea, any old idea, and riff on it.

Let the idea sit there and marinate for a while; let it solidify into something worth writing about.

Outline, outline, outline!

Let it bleed out of you; don’t stop to fix it, revise it later.

I’ve heard all kinds of suggestions on how and where to begin a new project, and in the back of my mind I’ve been thinking about how and where I’ll be starting up the next Mendaihu Universe story.  I’m still working Walk in Silence as my main project right now.  I’m also creating a story out of my daily words (currently called The Lidwells Story), so it’s not as if I’m hemming and hawing and not getting any work done.  The new MU story isn’t exactly top priority at the moment, but it’s in the back of my mind, poking me like a five year old every now and again, begging for a scrap of attention.

The trouble is that I’m really not sure where to start with it.  I have a few very vague ideas of characters and plot points, but nothing solid.  It’s not severe trouble, though…I have to remember that The Phoenix Effect started out almost completely from scratch as well, and I had maybe five or six scenes tops in my head.  I have to remember that I had two plans when I began it: 1) write a new novel, and 2) use the idea of human spirits coming from somewhere else.  That’s it.  Nearly all of the scenes, plots and subplots, and character evolution I wrote in that book I came up with while writing it.

So really–the trouble is not where to start the story, but where (and when) to begin writing it.  That is: prioritize projects. Don’t worry about the new MU story just yet–don’t worry about the plot or the characters, or even the theme at this point.  Finish WiS and the Blogging the Beatles projects, and continue submitting the Bridgetown trilogy.

It’ll come in time.  I’ll know when I’m ready for it.

On Writing Again: Getting Back On the Horse

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I’m my own worst critic when it comes to writing, and especially when it involves failure to keep to a writing schedule.  I made a joke of it late last year by calling it “Best Laid Plans”…mainly for the reason that whenever I went online to excitedly reveal what I’m currently working on, those plans would crash and burn spectacularly.  More to the point though, I’m constantly putting guilt on myself when I’m not writing.  I get that nagging itch that feels very much like Sunday night at 8pm, when I’ve realized I’ve left three classes’ worth of major homework undone until that point.  I yell at myself for being an idiot for not doing it earlier.  I gripe and moan and do half-assed work because I’m rushing it at the last minute.  And worst of all, there’s that one tiny voice in there, almost inaudible, that says you know, if you keep this up, you ain’t gonna get shit-all published in your lifetime.  Gods how I LOATHE that one voice…because it speaks a very bitter truth.

So after I get over the guilt and the shame and the irritation, I shut myself up and get back on the horse.

I haven’t exactly been lazy this past week, when it comes to writing.  One of my coworkers was out the latter half of the week and ended up with double-duty for those three days, so I realized I probably would not be running on full power.  I decided to let myself slack on the daily words, as they weren’t time-sensitive or the main project, and skipped on a few whiteboard points as well.  This left me with just enough brainpower to kick out some new words for Walk in Silence as well as decide how I was going to integrate them into the manuscript.  All told, I averaged about 500 words daily, and I’m happy with that result.

So now that everything’s back to normal, what am I going to do now?  Get back on the horse, of course of course.  I’m already doing so now by writing this entry, and starting tomorrow I’ll be hitting the daily words again.  I’ll even be able to hit the whiteboard points again.  Yes, I know, Best Laid Plans…but I’ll take it a day at a time, get done what needs being done, and be happy that I’d made forward progress.  Sometimes that’s the only thing you can do.

Now, if only I’d been this proactive with my homework back in high school…

On Writing: Reference Books

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I’ll admit, I have a lot of writing reference books that have a nice sheen of dust on them.  It’s an embarrassing admittance, but I have to put it out there.  I’d like to think I have a pretty decent grasp of grammar and style in my writing, even if my blog entries and novel first drafts leave William Strunk and EB White twitching in their graves at times.  I’ve cracked a few book spines here and there when need be (usually my copy of Webster’s Collegiate or the ever-helpful Flip Dictionary), but I think it’s high time I started utilizing them more.  Here’s a few that I find helpful, and you might too.

Ray Bradbury, Zen in the Art of Writing.  I picked this one up right about the time the first seeds of the Mendaihu Universe were sown in 1993.  I’d always been a big Bradbury fan (Dandelion Wine is one of my top favorite books ever), and always resonated with his style and method of writing.  His essays on writing inspired me to get out there and do it instead of just talking about it.  I reread this every other year or so, just to bring things into perspective again.

University of Chicago Press, The Chicago Manual of Style.  Seriously, I don’t know why I ignored these kinds of books for so long.  I may have a decent grasp of style and grammar, but I’m pretty sure I screw up the nitpicky stuff more than I wish to admit.  Everyone should have at least one manual of style kicking around, even if it is just to check if the period should go inside or outside the quotation mark at the end of a sentence.

Barbara Ann Kipfer, Flip Dictionary.  A. has often been at the receiving end of that writer’s question, “What’s the word for…?” when I’m having a brainfart, and this one’s great for fixing that.  It’s a reverse-lookup dictionary for the most part, but it also has short sections of related “type of” words (one being a list of hairstyle descriptions and their names afterwards).

Angela Ackerman & Becca Puglisi, The Positive Trait Thesaurus, The Negative Trait Thesaurus, and The Emotion Thesaurus.  Someone on Twitter suggested these to me at some point (I forgot who and when), but I picked them up soon after, and they get a lot more use than I expected.  I do tend to overuse certain expressions without thinking — a rough draft of The Persistence of Memories had nearly all the characters sighing in frustration at some point — and these books give me excellent alternatives.

Robert Lee Brewer, 2014 Guide to Self-Publishing. I’m excited that publishing is now at the point where DIY is viable and not frowned upon nearly as much anymore.  I’m even more fascinated by the fact that WD Books has finally released a self-pub version of their annual Writer’s Market book.  It’s set up pretty much the same way, giving a section to editorial services, writers’ conferences to look for, and other items of interest.  There are also quite a few interesting essays in there as well regarding the business of self-publishing that are worth a look.

Joel Friedlander & Betty Kelly Sargent, The Self-Publisher’s Ultimate Resource Guide.  This one popped out at the end of the year and is a nice and lean ebook on par with Brewer’s Guide.  Quite slim at 141 pages, it dispenses with any essays, how-to’s and so on, and instead just offers the online listings of a number of companies, artists and aggregators that can help you get your self-published book out and noticed.  If you know exactly what you need…say, an editing service to fix your typos, a specific image for your cover, and an aggregator to get the book out to multiple platforms?  This is a list of possible candidates for you, without the distraction of everything else you don’t need.  [Okay, I freely admit this one was a shameless plug, as I got a free ARC out of it if I gave it a review on my blog.  Still, I found it exactly what I need for my recent possible self-pubbing endeavors.  Plus, Joel is an excellent resource on the self-pub business, and Betty writes some great self-pub articles in Publisher’s Weekly that are worth searching out.]

Publisher’s Weekly.  I wouldn’t suggest this magazine for the beginner writers (I’d suggest The Writer, Poets & Writers and Writer’s Digest instead), but if you’re a professional writer or just about getting there, this one’s well worth the price.  It gives you weekly news on what’s going on in the publishing world, book and conference info, weekly sales charts, and quite the extensive (and very diverse!) review section that’s contributed to my TBR pile.  This magazine focuses on the non-writing end of things–what goes on once your book is out in the wild.  It’s eye-opening, and definitely puts things into perspective.

 

What are some of your favorite reference books?  Come and share!

On Not Writing: Trying Not to Feel Guilty for Taking Days Off

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In which I am the 1,459,476,874,686th person to take this picture in San Francisco.

After so many years at my day jobs, I was finally able to take my birthday off (January 22nd), so I decided to give myself a nice long four-day weekend.  We both had that Thursday off, so we decided to go out and about and have fun.  We hit a few of our favorite spots (bookstores, a yarn store, our local sushi boat restaurant) as well as visit a few new ones (Alamo Square, Bi-Rite Creamery and Brenda’s Meat & Three on Divisadero).  We even watched some anime that evening.  All in all it was a nice relaxing day, and the weather was perfect for it.  I spent most of Friday afternoon in the dusty dollar bins of Amoeba Records as a birthday present to myself. Yesterday we went to see a Tom Stoppard play (one of my favorite writers) and went out for dinner afterwards.  And today has been for cleaning and shopping.  Only now, at 3pm on Sunday, am I finally making an attempt to get some writing done.

Aside from a few blog posts and one day of daily words, my output these past few days has been pathetic.

Thing is, I hardly made an attempt.  There were a few moments there where I felt the pull of my daily words or my personal journal, but I chose against it.  It wasn’t a decision made out of being lazy–it was one made on purpose.  This was a way for me to remind myself that it’s okay to take a day off every now and again.  Even if there’s work to be done, sometimes it’s better to stop and smell the roses instead.

We writers often pride ourselves on being able to write whenever and wherever and for ridiculously long bursts at that, but we’re also our own worst enemies when it comes to deciding not to write.  Sometimes we must because of deadlines, or because it’s the only way to get any work done at all, but other times we don’t know when to quit for the day.  Yes, we could be out there watching a football game or walking around the neighborhood, or even sitting on our butts for six hours playing video games, but too often we deny ourselves that moment of entertainment.  Every moment without pen in hand or fingers on keyboard is a moment wasted.

That bit of guilt is still there, days later.  I only managed the daily words on Friday, breaking a 23-day streak, and I haven’t written in my journal since Wednesday.  I didn’t write any new words for Walk in Silence, but I did reread a few passages just to remind myself where I was.  The only thing I’ve done that remotely involves writing lately is read Steven Pinker’s The Sense of Style as part of my self-assigned homework.  After years of avoiding active study of style manuals and books on how to write well (caused by a tenth grade English teacher who tried to teach me how to analyze prose within an inch of its life), I thought it was high time to face that demon once and for all.

I know I’m still going to feel guilty that I squandered all these days off and broke that streak, but life goes on.  I truly enjoyed the days off.  I got errands done that needed doing.  I let myself spend a bit of coin on one of my favorite hobbies.  I shot some pretty decent photos of the local scenery.  And I got to spend some serious facetime with my wife, who usually finds me hiding up back in Spare Oom instead, nose at the grindstone.

Besides, my writing time will be back to normal come tomorrow.

On Writing: Stealth Mode

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I had another crazy idea the other day.  You know how it is…when I really should be working on my main project (in this case, the book Walk in Silence), my brain decides it wants to try writing a new, exciting story idea.  Equal parts Ooh Shiny and No I’m Not Procrastinating Really I’m Not, to be honest.

This crazy idea was to unconsciously write a novel.

Here’s the thing–my daily non-project words as of late usually end up being 750 to 1000-word passages of one ongoing theme or another.  I’d done this previously, last year (it’s the cat-and-crow idea I mentioned in this blog previoiusly), and it’s a good way for me to keep in the practice of figuring out the theme and plot of a story.

So as usual when I’m on the treadmill at the Y, listening to my mp3 player and contemplating my next writing moves (yes, that is really what I do when I’m at the gym), I started doing a bit of math in my head.  If my daily words at 750Words.com are hit every day, and I write something with the same theme each time, I’ll have a full novel of around 70 to 90k words by March.  Sort of like an extended NaNo project, only instead of trying to shoehorn around 2k words in one of the worst months for productivity, it’s a more leisurely three-month workout during the slowest business quarter.

So what is this about writing unconsciously?  Well, it’s not like I’m trying to write something without paying attention…it’s more of an attempt to write something organically, letting it expand on its own.  But more to the point, this would be about writing a novel without really planning to.  Writing a novel just for the hell of it, instead of trying to write my next attempt at publication.  I have no idea if it’ll pan out, or even if it does, whether it’ll be publishable after revision.  I don’t do that all that often–let’s be honest, a lot of writers just don’t have the time to do such a thing in the first place–but considering my daily 750 is non-project, non-serious writing, it would be interesting to see if I can pull this off.  Thus the stealth mode–writing but not paying that much attention to it.

I may fail miserably on this, or it may be my unexpected heartbreaking work of staggering genius.  Won’t know unless I write the damn thing, yes?

On Writing: Dead Letter Office

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I know I’m not the only writer who comes up with more ideas than they can possibly work with. Just today I’ve seen at least three Tweets from published writers opining on ideas they would love to work on, but alas time is short and other projects loom. These possible ideas may never come to light. And the thought of orphaned ideas kills us every time.

This popped into my mind the other day while I was doing some playing around with a possible future project. I use my daily practice words as a Word Playground just to give my brain a stretch (and to prime the pump, if need be). I had a peculiar waking dream the other morning that I was part of a musical family band — sort of like the Osmonds, only set in the 80s-90s — and thought I’d riff on that. The practice words turned into a ‘Where Are They Now?’ story, in which each member would tell the same part of their shared history, only their views were vastly different. The words came quick and easy, as did the separate character voices.

So, you’re asking. When the hell are you going to get around to writing that, when you’ve already got a bajillion other things going on? That is a very good question. I may get to it, I may not. I really don’t know. Does that bother me? It used to in the past, a bit. But since I’ve been writing for most of my adult life and have worked on a large number of projects over the years that have seen various states of completion, I’m not too worried about it.

It also got me thinking–what about the ideas I like, that I may not ever get around to working on? The ones that sing to me, but not enough for them to take precedence? Are they going to languish in my PC and Dropbox folders and on various scraps of paper, gathering dust until the end of time? I’m not talking about my trunked ideas and novels, the ones I know aren’t going anywhere anytime soon…I’m talking about the Word Playground ideas, the ideas that have merit and have been plotted out to some extent.

I had this crazy idea that, if I was going to sign off on an idea I knew I’d never get to, why let it die in my own imagination? Why not let someone borrow it? And then I started thinking about it more: what if I created these miniature worlds, laid the barest of rules and outlines, and shared them with other writers? It made sense in an odd way–there are countless fanfic writers out there who love coming up with their own stories based in someone else’s created world. Why not donate these orphaned ideas to someone who’ll give them more love than I could?

Of course reality always sneaks in on crazy ideas like this, bringing me back to earth. I wouldn’t be making a dime. I probably wouldn’t even be getting credit. I’d be building the framework, but the creator would change it into something not even remotely me. And so on.

Sure, it’s a wacky batshit idea that I probably should not entertain, especially at my point in my publishing career (read: yeah, yeah, I’ll get a book out eventually). Still…it’s a thought I’ll keep in the back of my mind anyway, just so I don’t feel too guilty about all those story ideas I have that’ll never get written.

On Writing: A Room of One’s Own

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When we moved out here to the Richmond District of San Francisco, we ended up with a second bedroom, which has since been turned into an all purpose room: it’s my day job/writing office, our hardcover and trade fiction library, my music studio, and A’s knitting and canning stashery.  It’s a mite bit crowded in here, but I’m not complaining.  I’ve got my computer for my writing and my mp3 collection to entertain me.

Today was a day for cleaning and rearranging.  I’d just recently bought a new printer–specifically, a three-in-one printer-scanner-copier–and was in need of putting it somewhere central where A. could get at it if necessary.  Which meant getting rid of the old trusty printer I’d had since our last apartment (and still working fine, though the power button’s a bit wonky) and the scanner that for some reason no longer worked.  Which also meant finding a new spot for this new one, because it’s much bigger.  Which means I have to find something stable to put it on.  Which means a filing cabinet.  Which means getting rid of the filing boxes currently on the floor (or repurposing them for other things elsewhere). And the filing cabinet needs to mobile or at least on legs so the heater it’ll partially be blocking will have some place to push the heat directly without blockage.

And so on and so forth.  I had to think about five to ten steps ahead while planning out how to move everything around without cluttering up the room.  This is what happens when you have a finite amount of space to work with.  As you can see above, there’s a lot going in a small area.  A. pointed out last night that a goodly amount of the stuff in this room is indeed mine, and that, sadly, is the truth.  But from past experience I’m quite adept at getting maximum use out of minimum space.

The desk is a long and narrow one acquired from Ikea.  The left side is my home PC and other bits and bots, and the phone and laptop to the right is my Day Job stuff.  This works out perfectly as I get to focus on my job during the day but still get to listen to my music and take an internet break every once in a while.  And in the evening, my focus is on the left side of the desk, where I do all my writing.  And off to the far right of the picture, you can see the new cabinet and printer.  I still need to refile a number of things and move those file boxes in front of the bookshelf, but other than that I’m happy how it looks.  It took a good number of days and a lot of cleaning, but it worked out well, and no extra floor space was taken up.

It’s a small room, but it gets the job done.

On Worldbuilding: Down the Rabbit Hole Willingly

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It’s often said that the downside to worldbuilding is that sometimes we writers get caught up in it, to the detriment of the actual writing.  I’ll freely admit that creating a fictitious world is a never-ending source of fun.  The Mendaihu Universe has grown and evolved over the course of two decades, and even as the Bridgetown trilogy enters Submission Phase this year, I’m still coming up with new avenues, new details for it.  Just yesterday I started playing around with another MU story set on Mannaka, an outpost world mentioned on the periphery in the BTown trilogy.  For the love of my own sanity, why am I doing this?

Short and most obvious reason?  More stories!  Ever since the aborted True Faith novel, I’ve always planned on setting a number of books in the same universe.  Not always in the same fixed spot in the timeline, of course…the timeline for yesterday’s brainstorming is up to question, but it would be a few millennia either before or after the BTown events.  This was partially inspired by Anne McCaffrey’s Pern universe–I liked the idea of writing multiple stories in my own created universe.  Each story would stand on its own, but there would always be a reminder somewhere (either up front or in the periphery) of the spiritual evolution story that’s central to the Mendaihu Universe.

And I spent a lot of time between 1994 and 1997, the years before I started The Phoenix Effect, just playing around with the universe, coming up with various story ideas and plot points in the timeline.  I remember a lot of slow afternoons in the ticket booth at the theater (and later at the radio station) where I’d lay the ground rules for my universe, such as major world events, evolutionary steps, and so on.  Just enough to give me anchors for future projects.

I can understand when worldbuilding can be a writer’s downfall, of course; spending too much time on the minutiae and not enough on the prose, focusing too much on the history and not enough on the present.  Or worse, giving into the joy of worldbuilding so completely that doing the actual writing becomes less than exciting.  It becomes like Charles Foster Kane, focusing on building the empire and home, changing it and morphing it as time and whim permits, but never quite finishing it.

The trick is to balance it out…I can have a lush background history, but I have to do something with it.  I can create a sprawling city-province like Bridgetown, but I have to have something happen there in particular.  I can create various characters to act out my story, but I have to have them do something inherently them in the process.   And after all of that, while I’m writing the story, I have a background I can work with–I can put these characters through a historical event that will affect them in one way or another, which will in turn cause them to evolve somehow.

I learned this when I realized I could no longer get away with ‘making it up as I go along’.  I learned it with The Phoenix Effect, when I realized that there were way too many divergent plot points and “I’ll revise it later” moments caused by immediate worldbuilding, all of which caused the story to be full of holes and inconsistencies.  When I restarted with A Division of Souls I forced myself to focus on the created history I had, and if new points of reference came up I would make a concerted effort to ensure they made sense in the overall story.  [A great example of this is in Chapter 2, when Assistant Director Dylan Farraway states “…this certainly isn’t a Second Coming…” to which Alec Poe responds with an offhanded “Ninth, sir.”  It was a complete throwaway line at the time I wrote it, but as I continued writing, the Ninth Coming of the One of All Sacred became the most important plot point of the entire trilogy.]

Working with your worldbuilding is definitely a tricky business.  You have to make copious notes.  You have to have a very sharp memory of what you’ve written.  You have to make sure you don’t get lost in it.  But once you’ve found a way to successfully manage it and make your way through it, it’s quite possibly the most enjoyable part of the writing process.

On Writing: Rejection Isn’t Always a Bad Thing

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For those of you that have been following along for the last few years (or decade or so) with my grand scheme of getting the Bridgetown Trilogy published, today was an interesting day.

Angry Robot Books has had some kind of “Open Door” special event over the past few years in which they would accept unsolicited submissions* until a set date. As it so happened, I had just finished up a major revision of A Division of Souls, and thought this would be a perfect opportunity. I speedily worked through the rest of the revision and sent it in with about two weeks left to go before the December 31 deadline. You may have heard they had a bit of a business shake-up a few months ago**, which caused a significant delay in the reading and accepting process. I’m fine with that, especially as they took the time to follow up with an email informing us they would still read all the submissions.

This morning, I received an email stating that they have decided to pass on the novel.

Now, I’m well aware that this would most likely be the case, for a few reasons: a) they had over a thousand entries this time out (MUCH higher than previous Open Doors), b) digging through a high number of entries to find that one shining piece of gold is normal in the publishing biz, and c) I’ll readily admit that it could still use work. More on that in a few. The long and short of it is, this is not my first rejection, and will most likely not be my last. This is just part of the game.

Am I bummed? Of course, but not overly so. You might say I’m actually a bit relieved, as this gives me the freedom to tidy it up a bit more and shop it elsewhere now.*** Given that I’ve been working on this project off and on for way too long (twenty, seventeen, fourteen, or seven years, depending on the version you ask about and whether or not you count interim years of stasis), I’ve also been doing a lot of thinking about how I would want to see this book out in the wild. Between those years in the early 00’s where I sent it out to various agents and publishers, and now, where self-publishing has become a viable, more professional and accessible option, my options have actually expanded.

I’m actually kind of happy that Angry Robot took the time not only to read the first four chapters of A Division of Souls, but upon rejection went so far to state that they felt “the dialogue could use work, as it reads as too artificial, not natural enough” as part of the reason.

Honestly? That’s the best thing a publisher has ever said to me in all my years of being a writer.

In all the rejection letters I’ve ever received from both publishers and agents, I’ve only received the variation of the “not for us” form letter. Which is all well and good–I’m okay with those too, because I’m pretty sure they at least took a cursory look at it. But this is the first time I’ve actually received something that says “hey, it’s not for us…but here’s what you might want to fix/focus on in the future.”

To me, that means two things: they took my submission seriously, and that they took the time to let me know what didn’t work, even if it was one out of many possible issues that could be wrong with it. And that makes all the difference.

So what are my future plans for the Bridgetown Trilogy? Am I going to make good with the fake cover I made on the previous post and go self-pub? Am I going to be the stubborn bastard that I am, revise AGAIN and find a new home for it? It’s up in the air, really. I’m keeping my options open. Yet another recent reread has shown that some of the dialogue and prose is indeed a bit stiff, and oddly about halfway through, the default reaction for many characters seem to be that of sighing in frustration. Eesh!

One thing’s for sure, I’m not going to ragequit this writing life. I love it too damn much to give up now.

Learn from mistakes. Listen and process the critiques. And make the best damn piece of art you can.


* – For those unaware, ‘unsolicited submissions’ means that the publisher would accept manuscripts cold, rather than through agents or an agreed-upon offer. I highly suggest studying up on the submission guidelines of various publishers and agents to understand what’s needed–some want specific things and/or in specific formats, others will take printed copies, etc. Following their guidelines makes them happy and makes you look like a pro.

** – Short version: They closed down their YA and Mystery imprints earlier this year, and changed ownership last month. Not holding this against them, and I hope for the best, as they have quite a number of great titles out there that are definitely worth checking out.

*** – I would love to go into detail here about multiple submissions, but I’ll save it for a future entry. Suffice it to say, I purposely waited on this one to force myself to start working on other projects on the interim, which has worked out well so far.

On Writing: Determination and Distraction

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Some of you may have seen my Twitter pic or my LiveJournal post last night regarding “the Return of the Whiteboard Writing Schedule.”  A few years back I bought one of those erasable whiteboards that has a calendar grid on it and stuck it on the wall, eye-level, in front of my desk.  I used to have one of these in the Belfry years ago as well, which I used as a way to remind me of due dates and deadlines.  It worked out pretty well then, and figured it would be good to have again.

When I first put it up, I came up with the idea of giving myself a strict writing schedule.  Two reasons for this: my writing time is not as concrete as it used to be, and I find that I’m more productive when I give myself a specific schedule in which to do things.  This was proven during the Belfry years when I consistently hit a high word count working in the early evenings every day.  I also had one project going at the time–the Bridgetown Trilogy–so as long as I stayed true to it, I was fine.

I’ve used this schedule since around 2011.  I’ve changed it up a few times, moved things around, dropped a few projects, but for the most part it’s worked.  I chose to drop it for a time earlier this year, but for a good reason: I was doing a major revision of the Trilogy and wanted to devote all my writing time solely to that.  Now that that’s done and that I’ve anchored myself to a new writing project, it’s time to return.  I reused the January 2013 schedule I’d come up with that had served me well; the new project takes up the weekday, with Walk in Silence taking up the weekends.  I’ve also peppered in some offline/personal projects such as poetry, art, and music practice.  I’m also returning to my morning 750 Words, which I’ll sneak in during my work hours alongside my daily journaling. 

It’s a lot, but I like having a lot to work on.  It keeps the creative blood flowing.  It also makes me a better writer in the process.  Furthermore, they’re not strict deadlines but guidelines.  This isn’t homework, something I must do, but something to aim for on a weekly basis.

 

So…what’s this about distraction, then?

Well, that would be the forays over to YouTube, the refreshing of the Twitter feed, my longterm project of music cataloging, among other things.  Mostly done during the work day, when things are slow.  All well and good in moderation.  I can allow myself to let the time pass.  Hell, my old timewaster at work when I didn’t have internet access was doing word search games.  It’s a way to relax and keep oneself occupied.

On the other hand, when there’s nothing better to do and no immediate directive involved, it’s easy to fall into the trap of distraction.  Popping onto a website to see the latest posts, read the latest news, keep up-to-the-minute tabs on friends and acquaintances.  We still get fascinated by immediate gratification, and that’s what the internet is all about.  It’s what movies, radio, and TV were all about.  Which means that it’s up to our own selves to know when to turn it off, because no one else will do it for us.

It took me awhile to learn that.  I’ll fully admit that I get easily distracted.  Playing around with my mp3 collection, falling down the Wikipedia or YouTube rabbit holes, playing FreeCell or Solitaire, you know how it is.  I’d stop myself after twenty minutes or so, basically when my conscience would gently prod me and say “Dude, look at the time.  You’re wasting most of it right now.  You’d better get cracking if you want to get anything done tonight.”  And as timing would have it, my wife would walk in about five minutes before that moment and mock me for dicking around so much.  I’d eventually get things done, but later than usual.

This is another reason for the return of the Whiteboard Writing Schedule:  so I’m too busy doing things I enjoy, such as writing, drawing, or playing my guitar, to be distracted by timewasting things such as cat memes and silly gifs.

So.  How to avoid distraction?  Any specific steps?  Any tricks?

Not really.  Just the one step: Be aware that you’re distracting yourself, and do something about it.  Especially when you notice it and not doing anything about it.  You want to be a writer, yes?  Fine.  You want to get some writing done tonight?  Fine–then stop not writing.  You’re well aware of the distractions–it’s up to you to be procative and cut down on them.  Replace them with distractions you enjoy–reading, painting, hiking, what have you.  They may not exactly make you more productive or prolific, but they’re an outlet that inspires you.  And in the process, they may even change your mood so you’re even more creative once you start writing.