My computer connects to the internet and there is a world of wonder at my finger tips! This is not good!
I actually started writing once upon a set of wheels in 2001 and I didn’t have a pc that connected to the internet, I had a word processor. I then had a pc but it was second hand and I lived in a flat share. My flat mates had a laptop and they had internet which they paid for and my parents had internet which I could go and use from time to time to do research.
After this I lived in my first house and I didn’t have internet. All I had on my lovely little second hand PC, where the monitor took up more space on the desk than anything else, was Solitaire, FreeCell, Hearts and minesweeper. I didn’t really even have music on it, I had my little CD player in the corner that I played music on.
When I came to the computer I would play Solitaire or minesweeper for between five and twenty minutes while I arranged all the raging thoughts I had had all day about the next progression of the story. Then it was just me and the page in front of me (and Guns n Roses greatest hits!) and I could work.
Now, there’s a whole universe in my computer and it’s not good for my wondering mind! There are too many distractions! Even when you fight them, they are there, tickling the back of your mind, reminding you of random things like: Oh I meant to order those photo’s, I’ll just go on line now! Or I wanted that book on marketing, I’ll just go on Amazon!
If you’re self publishing, then comes the balance. ‘While I’m at the computer I’ll just do a tweet for the book, I’ll just go on Facebook for the next blog, I’ll just check Google plus, I’ll just go on Good reads. I’ll just read that blog, I’ll just.. I’ll just…. I’ll just…’ then 3 hours have passed and you’ve written ‘Chapter 4’ and the rest of the page is staring at you blankly. Now you have to cook dinner, take the dog for a walk, sort out the clothes washing etc etc etc.
I’ll be honest my biggest distraction isn’t just the internet, it’s the TV, which before the internet was at my finger tips was actually ok, especially before digital recording, because you had set times to sit and watch your favourite programmes and then you had the rest of the day. Now you can record all those programmes while you spend all day on the internet ‘marketing and researching’ (spending time on Facebook and twitter and funny cat videos on Youtube!) then you go back and you have five hours of programmes to catch up on so you can free up memory on the box.
Your brain is a weird and marvellous thing, because while you’re doing all that, you are making up the story and developing it in your head and you think, ‘yeah I have a story’ but it’s only in your head because you spent so long on the bloody internet!
You need to write it down, and that is hard, because there’s so much going on.
Turn off the wireless!
Seriously, I know it doesn’t fix it because to be fair you can just switch it back on. But it’s a start.
I work best under pressure, whether it’s my writing or work. I wrote most of my dissertation in the last three weeks, because the pressure suddenly hit me and I had to get it done! NaNoWriMo is great if you can convince yourself it’s a real serious deadline: you have to write those 50’000 words!
Give yourself deadlines if no-one else does. Almost bully yourself into the focus. You have to get it done or it’ll fail.
Use that wonderful box that records all your favourite programmes as a reward. I will finish this and when I do I can sit down for a whole and just let my brain numb at the soaps.
Delete the candy crush app. I know you can just download it again, but you know what, you have to start from level one again! How devastating!
Time is important. Yes you have to market your book, and yes you have to write for your blog and yes you have to do research. However it’s amazing how unimportant what everyone else on Facebook is doing when you have a deadline. We’re social creatures, we need to talk and be involved with each other which is why all these networks are so popular, but you’re a writer, like a lighthouse keeper; you only socialise with others when the job is done!
Easier said than done? Oh hell yeah! We’re not marines or SAS, we’re not athletes with that incredible self discipline. We’re writers, we write about human interaction more than anything else so we feel that desire to indulge in it. Discipline really is what it’s about though, it has to come from you, you have to push yourself and be strict.
On May 17th 1982, an infant girl is found in a stolen car abandoned on a bridge. The police call her ‘Lotus’ after the car she is discovered in, and ‘Ogden’ – the name of the dam over which the car rested. Abandoned for no one; for no one came to claim her as their child, no one came to say that they were responsible for this babe, no one came to love her. This was how it was to be; always.
Following abuse at the hands of her adoptive father, foster families and others, Lotus finds unlikely allies in car thieves and drug dealers, but her life of crime extends so much further than any of them appreciate. So very young, she takes her first life and realises how easy it is, and how no one would ever suspect the poor, timid, shy little girl who nobody calls their own. “Villain? Anti-Hero? Whatever she is, Lotus Ogden is like a perfect storm of rage and pain, but she’s also disturbingly human.” “Feed the dogs and take the phone off the hook. Once you get into this book you’re not going to want to put it down.” “A fast read, a great story, full of twists and turns.”
Genre – Crime, Thriller
Rating – PG-18
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