Distractions

When I first started writing, which was over 20 years ago, one of the things that I had to struggle with were distractions. Back then, of course, sitting in the basement for days on end during the summer with an underwood typewriter with sticky keys, hammering out page after page of what I thought was a brilliant "Dungeons & Dragons" adventure novel (which was really nothing more than a young teenager enjoying writing a story with lots of sword fights and sex scenes), the distractions were my friends who wanted to go to the beach, go for a bike ride, play street hockey, whatever.

As I got a bit older, the distractions became girls, girls and more girls. Not that I ever had much success with women, of course. But I spent a lot of time chasing them. (The only reason I think I ended up succeeding with Francine is that she just got tired of running) But there were other distractions, too. Television was a big one. Heading out to bars and concerts, etc with my friends was another. And just plain goofing off.

When I first started browsing the internet (or "information super-highway" as it was known years and years ago), it was pretty exciting, and took away my writing time. Then, when I first moved from a text-based isp to one with images, I was blown away. And like many young men, I immediately discovered internet porn. That was a distraction for a while. Fortunately I've gotten over it. For the most part. Some might argue that my HNT obsession is nothing more than artistically masked porn. I beg to differ, of course.

Something I haven't gotten over, would be the distractions from the thousands upon thousands upon thousands of VERY interesting people I've discovered online via blogging. Just look at my blog links on the right nav and you'll see. And the damn thing continues to grow. So many fascinating people to read and catch up with, so little time.

All time that gets taken away from the already precious and limited writing time. Distractions are such an issue for me as a writer that I actually wrote a story about Distractions plaguing a writer, a fun tongue-in-cheek dark humour story, which I reprinted in One Hand Screaming and you can read for free. Click here and following the link to the story entitled, you guessed it: Distractions)

And right now, for example, while I had planned on spending 15 minutes making notes on a few unfinished writing projects (I have a half-completed sci-fi novel, a half-completed mystery novel and a children's book that needs to have a red pen taken to it to reduce word count by 20%, nevermind the fact that I'm about to get to a point in I, Death that I haven't properly mapped out yet), I've spent it blogging.

Well, at least blogging is writing. Right? And one of the huge benefits about that writing would be that people out there actually read that writing. And, unlike writing a story or a novel, the feedback is almost immediate. It feeds that little writer ego that longs, not for positive comments or praise, but mostly just to be read and acknowledged.

Oh, and something that I rarely admit. I actually love my distractions. That's what makes it so tough, it's one of those love/hate relationships. They plague me, but I couldn't live without them.