Nothing is better at distracting a writer than the fucking internet. In many cases people do their writing on computers and looky here that’s one of the places where the internet can be found.
"I’m just going to" are the four most dangerous words in the world to a writer.
I’m just going to check my email.
I’m just going to check the scores.
I’m just going to check the weather.
I’m just going to see if I’ve had any responses to the comment I posted on that forum.
I’m just going to check the news.
I’m just going to see if my paycheck has been uploaded.
I’m just going to google that person whose name occurred to me for the first time in years.
The problem with “just going to check one thing” is that it often turns into several one things. And even if it doesn’t, checking one thing can eat up a lot of time. You check your email and find something you have to respond to. You check the scores and end up looking at highlights or reading about a game or checking the standings. You check the weather then check the next day’s and the day after that. You check that forum and find someone responded to your comment and you’ve got to respond to that plus you need to check all the other comments that have appeared since you last visited. You check the news naively believing that you just want to see what’s going on in that one situation but there are three or for other stories that you read about. You check your pay and find that it's not what you thought it would be and so you dig into that. You google that one person and that reminds you of someone else to google and that reminds of you still another person.
By the time your done dinner is ready or it’s time to go or you can’t put off that chore any longer. Your writing time is gone.
Some writers don’t do their work on a computer that’s connected to the internet. First problem: how many frickin’ computers do you think I have? Second problem: I’m constantly looking things up when I’m writing. The dictionary, the thesaurus, or something that will inform my writing. My last two novels are historical and I’m all about accuracy so am constantly having to look something up to make sure that event could have happened that day.
Discipline. That’s what it comes down to. I have a great deal of self-discipline (is self-discipline redundant?) when it comes to most things like eating, exercise, teaching and keeping up with chores, but the damned internet is a real siren. Ya know what else? It’s still feels new. I guess that’s a consequence of my being old. We’ve had the internet in the house for 25 years. For a lot of people that’t there whole life or most of their life. I was already in my forties when it came along. It seems indispensable now but I lived a lot of years without it.
Time flies is at once trite and quite true. My goodness smart phones have already been around for over fifteen years. I grew up in a time when if someone was caught staring at a phone they’d be considered a candidate for the booby hatch.
Who says booby hatch anymore? Or laughing academy? Or funny farm? Or nuthouse? We take mental illness far more seriously than when I was a kid. It’s odd that people would refer to it as the laughing academy given how depressing a place mental institutions are. I think that one of the signs of good mental health is being able to have a good chuckle. Of course it has to be at something funny. You find someone laughing at boiling water then….
At the end of the previous sentence I initially typed than. I had to think for a second whether I wanted then or than. You’d think I’d automatically know that one by now. It’s like weather or weather. Then there’s the whole site, cite and sight business. Sorting those can eat up a few seconds of writing time. I don’t usually hesitate with hole or whole. Maybe because their meanings are opposite. It’s and its can be vexing. They’re easy to miss. However I’m careful with their, there and they’re. The worst mistake with a homophone I ever saw was when I was subbing. An English teacher had written roll call (it’s role call). An English teacher! In a classroom! Not a good look.
I can't think of how to end this post. Sometimes that's an issue for me. Maybe I'll just type the end. There, that did it.
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