Ages ago, before the zip of instantaneous technology and web sites, emails and groups and loops, I would closet myself off and write and write and write. Mostly teen-age angst and poetry that I thought was all that. I dreamed of "being a writer," and my future published status. And I had the classic heroes of old to give me motivation. Those writers who did not push for notoriety, but let their writing speak for itself. They didn't have Yahoo Groups to catch up on, web sites to design or blogs to post their every thought and frustration. There was no twitter or facebook. Hell, there weren't even any telephones! Man, can you imagine having that kind of indulgence. No extraneous distractions to pull you away from or interfere with your writing and thought process. Jealous, am I? Yep.
Some writers enjoy the constant zip and zoom around the internet. It's addicting, I know. I enjoy it myself, I won't deny this. Still, how often do we, as writers, find ourselves wandering off our focused track of writing to read and respond to emails, update our sites and check on our groups? Way too often, I'm sure. I too often find my own self sidetracked in such a way. My personal pet peeve is searching for pictures. One, two, three hours later, and oftentimes I'm still looking for just that right image. *Sigh* Imagine all that time I could have been working on my dialogue.
I've heard of some writers who have a separate, unattached-to-the-internet computer they write on to prevent such diversions. I've heard of some who schedule their internet time like you'd monitor a child's TV watching time. Then, there are those who are blessed with the inner discipline to completely avoid any way-laying. How do they do it? I wanna know!
And I sit here and laugh at myself, because I'm proving myself as one of those to-be-distracted.
At any rate, hope your day is going well, and back off to writing am I!
No comments:
Post a Comment