I'm routinly distracted when i'm trying to focus, 3 hours ago i sat down to write up and idea that's been floating around my mind all day then half way through i go on 8 ball pool and i spend 2 hours playing that before realising that i had infact sat down to work on my idea... anyone got any ideas how to stop getting easily distracted?
Haha, oh it's hard not to be distracted. I'd say disconnect your internet as the internet seems to be the source of most of my distractions.
Use a voice recorder instead of typing it. I do that sometimes. Freecell and Sudoku are my time wasters
Adderall? Seriously, if you aren't suffering from adult ADD, there is no answer. Writing is discipline like anything else. But unlike everything else, it's also compulsive. You want to or not. You might need diagnosis. Or you might need to make a choice.
.......I discover online writing forums! Hurray! I'd really love to hear about other writers experiences of avoiding the keyboard/pen. I'm new to writing forums. I've been obsessing about my "novel" for about 4 months now. In that time I've written the grand total of 500 words. Can't seem to get down and actually WRITE! I seem to just get bogged down in over-analysing everything and thinking "nah she wouldn't say that" or "yeah that could happen but then there'd be......" to the point that nothing gets written at all!! Do any of you guys have this problem? Is there a way out of this insanity or am I doomed to an easy life of reading other people's novels, broken only by endless hours of youtube??
It's an easy trap to fall into. Writing takes discipline, no doubt about it. Some people like to edit as they go. I, like you, find that if I do that, it's never what I want it to be. So, I write in only one direction - forward. And I keep going until I've got a first draft, unless I discover that I've really gone off the rails. Once I have a first draft, I go back and edit the dickens out of it. But you just have to have the willpower to avoid things that distract you and rob you of your writing time.
Yeah I hear ya! I think I'm just terrified to actually write. The words "feel the fear and do it anyway" come to mind, obvious as that is! Thanks so much for your feedback, really appreciate it. x
Procrastination is the worst enemy of writers and students alike. I always seem to be most easily distracted when I'm stuck at my stories or trying to study for exams or writing an important essay! You're absolutely right; if you overthink everything, that's when you lose the drive and/or story. I can't tell you how many good ideas I've had which have ended up crumbling before I've even written a word because of my terrible problem; I'm going to call it "Writer's OCD" because it feels like no matter what I do to the piece, it's never perfect. It makes me wonder whether published authors go through the same thing, and how people end up overcoming it. :'c I'm certainly not one to dish out advice in this area...
Ditto! I'll be sure to keep coming back to this thread to read everyone's advice even though I already know what I should do :redface:
If it was my enemy, I wouldn't spend so much time with it. C: My worst method of procrastination is probably just sitting. Sometimes I will very literally just stare at things in my room and think of NOTHING. Or I'll get my hockey stick and pretend to fight zombies.
That's why writing on WORD is a double egded sword. Easier to format, quicker and safer...but the opportunities for procrastination are huge! I'm tempted sometimes to ask my fiancee to take out an extremely strict child lock on the internet
I never have this problem. Ever. I make sure to get to know my characters so well prior to beginning the novel that I don't even need to think too much about whether it's plausible on the first draft. Plus, I write long (20-35k) outlines. My favourite ways to procrastinate are easily cleaning the bathroom and/or clearing out the bedroom - if I do both it'll keep me busy for hours!
Save it for next time, save it for revisions. Just save it. This works best for me because I don't have a wireless modem, so I have to have my laptop at my desk to plug it into the internet. I did have a cord at my bedside as well, but the connector broke, so now I've just got the one that I purposely bought because it wouldn't reach any further than my desk.
In regards to rethinking or rewriting I found it hard not to start a new day by going back and re-editing the previous day's work, so by the end of that day I wouldn't have anything new written and the story wasn't moving forward. So, I've started to write in longhand and once I'm happy with a scene I'll copy it into Word, editing as I go - this way the story has moved forward (in my longhand draft) and is getting a polish as I put it into Word - It will of course need re-editing and polishing into a second and probably third draft, but at least it's moving forward. In my Word headers and footers in a big red font I have the following copy to help me along: JUST WRITE – DON’T REVIEW OR REWRITE – JUST GET IT DOWN!
As I write something I tend to realize I haven't done exactly what I want with that chapter almost half the time. What I'm doing now is writing up one chapter and then typing it up and adding in the changes I thought needed to be done. This way I don't have it hanging on my head the ENTIRE time, but I'm also not stopping mid-sentence to go back to the previous one and such...
Amen! I never understood people saying they are afraid to write, yet they claim they want to... please explain to me where this fear comes from. I wanna understand because I've heard so many people say the same thing. I am not joking though, I keep internet open if I have to google something and while it's still open, I might check out the forums every now and then
I think they mean that they are afraid that if they do actually write something, it might not be perfect. I don't actually keep a window open for the internet when I'm writing, but I know it's only an icon-click away if I need it.
