Distractions

As writers, we perform an almost wonderous feat.  We take something that exists only inside our heads and we make it real by capturing it on paper.  We tease out characters, situations, and places from nowhere.

When the writing is going well it's a joy to live like this.  On good days I can sit and write over two thousand words, and those words come effortlessly.  On bad days I struggle to produce six hundred words, and those words sound leaden and uninspiring.

On the days when we're struggling it's easy to get sidetracked by distractions. I write my longhand first drafts in cafés, and often distractions for me can take the form of noisy people sitting nearby.  Why do so many young people have to talk so damned loudly these days?  I suppose they're imitating some soap or popular character on TV, but they can be damned annoying.

And it doesn't do any good to listen in to their distracting conversation.  They're usually downright boring, or they're whining about someone won't be the person they want them to be.  The number oif times people exhibit the desire to control others' lives in their conversations is amazing.

Some writers might be able to take these distractions and turn them into characters.  Personally I don't want that kind of person in my books.  I want to write about a world that is freer, bigger, grander, more equal than the one I find myself in today, and most people I overhear talking in cafés don't support my ideals.

For other writers, the distractions might be spending too much time in a job they hate, worrying about not having enough money, or fretting over the state of a relationship.  We can always find something to pull us away from the task of writing if we want to.  The real question is whether our writing is important enough to us to refuse the distractions in front of us and find the time to write despite them.  Ultimately, finding the time to finish a story or a novel is all about choosing our writing above distraction.