Wasting time and how to avoid it.
Forgive me for not posting for a few days; I've been distracted by the conversation I've been having with J.F. Lewis about his upcoming sequel, ReVamped. Ah, I can't wait.
So. Without further ado, onto today's topic.
I won't ever concider myself a practical writer. I put off actual writing for months, instead losing myself in 'getting to know the characters' (ie: doing those horrible questionares that are 400 pages long or other time-wasting games) or writing and re-writing my outline, scenes, ect.
A good book I once read - Write is a Verb by Bill O'Hanlon - describes these acts as still writing, because I'm putting effort into my writing. Part of me agrees... but the other part thinks of them as nothing but wasting time.
I don't need to know what my character would do when faced with an alien attack. IT ISN'T GOING TO HAPPEN. I don't need to write out a detailed list of what is in her kitchen 'junk-drawer'. SHE WON'T BE GOING IN THERE FOR ANYTHING. If she does, I don't need to know what's in there ahead of time. I won't be describing, in detail, how it's the third cabinet left of the stove and how she has to rummage through packets of taco sauce, plastic straws, bolts, keys (the she can't remember what they go to), and paperclips to find a pen. It doesn't matter! I can make it up on the spot!
But I still do it.
Why? I don't know. But the point is, I'm still writing... still working towards my goal, even if the subject is useless.
What are some other time wasters we do when we write? I've talked to a lot of writers in my day, and the biggest time waster is checking your email/blogs/forums. Even the most dedicated writer falls victim to checking the internet every ten-to-fifteen minutes. It's like a timer in our heads.
3...2...1... Check email!
This is a hard one to overcome. The itch is always there... writing for your project isn't nearly as fun as replying to that thread about that horrible Naruto fanfic that someone posted as a novel or reading another one of those forwarded joke emails where the punch lines are represented by an animated picture of some sort.
Wait... writing IS more fun than that! Who are we kidding? Why do we do this to ourselves?! Sadly I don't have an answer, but I do have a few tricks as a solution.
The first one I've used is Temptation Blocker. It's a program you can download that will lock you out of any program you tell it to... for a period of time you specify. If you want to get into the programs before then, you have to enter in this breathtakingly long list of alpha-numeric characters, randomly generated by the program.
Let's just say it makes you want to forget about your email.
Temptation Blocker is great, but a lot of times I need the net for one form of research or another. I don't like to do extensive research before the project starts (I never seem to remember it all anyway) and so there are a lot of times that I either need to leave myself reminders in the text I type, or I need to look something up. So Temptation Blocker gets annoying sometimes.
Instead, I've started using a word count: "I'll check my email after 800 words" or "I'll look at that forum after I finish 200 more words". It's very useful to do this because you can set reasonable goals without having it take up your whole train of thought. By the time you actually write 800 words you've forgotten why you wanted to check your email in the first place.
Writing without being distracted is hard... and impossible from what I've seen. No writer is without distraction. It's how we deal with these distractions that make us either productive, or not.
Now, time for me to get back to question 103 of this questionare... If your main character was a writer, what would their WIP be about?
>.> /sigh.
So. Without further ado, onto today's topic.
I won't ever concider myself a practical writer. I put off actual writing for months, instead losing myself in 'getting to know the characters' (ie: doing those horrible questionares that are 400 pages long or other time-wasting games) or writing and re-writing my outline, scenes, ect.
A good book I once read - Write is a Verb by Bill O'Hanlon - describes these acts as still writing, because I'm putting effort into my writing. Part of me agrees... but the other part thinks of them as nothing but wasting time.
I don't need to know what my character would do when faced with an alien attack. IT ISN'T GOING TO HAPPEN. I don't need to write out a detailed list of what is in her kitchen 'junk-drawer'. SHE WON'T BE GOING IN THERE FOR ANYTHING. If she does, I don't need to know what's in there ahead of time. I won't be describing, in detail, how it's the third cabinet left of the stove and how she has to rummage through packets of taco sauce, plastic straws, bolts, keys (the she can't remember what they go to), and paperclips to find a pen. It doesn't matter! I can make it up on the spot!
But I still do it.
Why? I don't know. But the point is, I'm still writing... still working towards my goal, even if the subject is useless.
What are some other time wasters we do when we write? I've talked to a lot of writers in my day, and the biggest time waster is checking your email/blogs/forums. Even the most dedicated writer falls victim to checking the internet every ten-to-fifteen minutes. It's like a timer in our heads.
3...2...1... Check email!
This is a hard one to overcome. The itch is always there... writing for your project isn't nearly as fun as replying to that thread about that horrible Naruto fanfic that someone posted as a novel or reading another one of those forwarded joke emails where the punch lines are represented by an animated picture of some sort.
Wait... writing IS more fun than that! Who are we kidding? Why do we do this to ourselves?! Sadly I don't have an answer, but I do have a few tricks as a solution.
The first one I've used is Temptation Blocker. It's a program you can download that will lock you out of any program you tell it to... for a period of time you specify. If you want to get into the programs before then, you have to enter in this breathtakingly long list of alpha-numeric characters, randomly generated by the program.
Let's just say it makes you want to forget about your email.
Temptation Blocker is great, but a lot of times I need the net for one form of research or another. I don't like to do extensive research before the project starts (I never seem to remember it all anyway) and so there are a lot of times that I either need to leave myself reminders in the text I type, or I need to look something up. So Temptation Blocker gets annoying sometimes.
Instead, I've started using a word count: "I'll check my email after 800 words" or "I'll look at that forum after I finish 200 more words". It's very useful to do this because you can set reasonable goals without having it take up your whole train of thought. By the time you actually write 800 words you've forgotten why you wanted to check your email in the first place.
Writing without being distracted is hard... and impossible from what I've seen. No writer is without distraction. It's how we deal with these distractions that make us either productive, or not.
Now, time for me to get back to question 103 of this questionare... If your main character was a writer, what would their WIP be about?
>.> /sigh.