Distractions

It’s positive and rewarding to talk about… the tools and techniques we use to get our writing done – to get all those words on the page, one after another. It’s humbling to admit that there are times when the words don’t flow, or sure don’t flow easily.

And nothing chokes off that flow faster than being distracted.

However, I’m pretty good at not being distracted while I write. I don’t incessantly check Facebook or Twitter or surf the ‘net, which is (as I understand it), the bane of a lot of writers. I may dip in for a minute to fact-check something via Google, but for the most part, I can lock in and wring some productivity out of the time I’ve set aside.

My problem is making sure I don’t encroach on the time I do have set aside, and here’s how that works.  My biological clock is set to “half past dusk”: my traditional preference has been to write at night, but for the last few months, I’ve switched to writing in the morning.  Early in the morning. That means I need to get bed at a decent hour so I can wake up fresh and bang out my writing and not be a zombie during my full 12 hour work day. And that’s where my distractions lurk: in those couple of “free” hours I have at the end of the night. It’s easy for me to lose track of that time, and discover I’ve stayed up way past the point my current schedule allows.

(And that’s the secret, right? When you have kids and a demanding profession and other commitments, then your writing has to be hardwired into that schedule).

What are those distractions? Well, the aforementioned ‘net for one – I like to catch up on all the blogs, sites, etc. that I follow. You know, troll through Agent Query Connect and Good Reads. On my iPad I use both Zite and Flipboard to aggregate the sites I like; on my phone I use Feedly – all of them are chock full.  Then there are the books: at the moment, thanks to Joe Hill, it’s easy to burn the midnight oil on NOS4A2.

Already looking ahead during college basketball season, I’ll be struggling on those nights when a 9 PM ESPN U of L game goes late (although the advantage of living In The West is that those games are never quite as late).

This summer my two younger daughters have enjoyed helping me play DIABLO 3 (yes, this says something about my parenting, probably something bad). I’m not a real computer gamer per se – I don’t really have the patience for it, but I’ll try out stuff every once and a while. I’m much more inclined to play something if there’s a competitive aspect to it, or I can do it in conjunction with someone else.  Sitting down with DIABLO 3 and letting the girls scream at my foes and smash at the keys while helping me accomplishes two great things: one, I actually experience some success with that stupid game (the girls are much better at it than I am); and two, I get to share all that fun with my girls. But that fun can come at a price – it’s too easy to sit there for too long, laughing and goofing off and whittling the night away.

As I said, I’m not much of a computer gamer, but there is another computer game that can be a huge distraction for me. Many, many years ago when I was starting law school I got introduced to the card game MAGIC: THE GATHERING. The mechanics of the game are far beyond the scope of this post, but suffice it to say, it can be a time and money sink, and the intricacy, tactical and collectible nature of it appeals to the both creative and OCD sides of my brain. I’ve followed the game for years, but in the last decade or so confined my actual playing to just a few tournaments here and there, and those rare times when I got together with some friends of mine who also succumbed. However, a few years back, right around the time I got divorced, I dipped into the online version of the game (trust me, there’s no correlation) – something I had resisted forever, and for good reason.  Once I had access to playing whenever I wanted, against real competition, 24 hours a day, well, then I naturally played a lot.

It became a quick and easy distraction.

And I still play now – but I try not to play at night during the work week, because it’s easy to get sucked into playing too long, too late, and that has a ripple effect for both my work, and my writing.

Let’s take it as a given that it’s probably silly that a 40ish-year-old man plays a (now) 20-year-old fantasy card game (although, damn that game is fun). The point of all of this isn’t the what, it’s the why. Why do we as writers let these distractions, whatever they may be, get in the way of the work we really know we want to do – write? It’s self-defeating, and yet we all seem to struggle with it.

It’s because writing is hard. It’s not only the real work we want to be doing, it’s just flat out real work. It takes sweat equity and brain power to sit there and snap those words together like Legos, and then pull them apart and start over again. It’s easier to come home and crack open a beer and watch a ballgame or THE WALKING DEAD; read a magazine, or play a computer game. Easier, and probably more immediately rewarding.

Still, I think what ultimately separates those who want to write, from those who actually write, is that ability and desire to manage life’s distractions.

It’s not always easy, but it’s worth it.