It can be difficult to get work done when there are so many distractions around us in today’s society. The article “How Can You Create Fiction When Reality Comes to Call” uses the author, Carolyn Chute’s, detailed daily routine as an example of how many things can get in the way of trying to write. Things like Chute’s typewriter breaking, multiple visitors, and household chores to attend to add up to make it nearly impossible for her to make any progress on the novel she desperately wants to work on. Although some distractions will be unavoidable, there are some things that can be done to help stay focused. Drake Baer’s article “6 Ways to Be a Hemingway-Level Productive Badass” talks about some of the techniques Ernest Hemingway used to stay productive, such as waking up early in the morning to write and keeping track of how many words he wrote each day.
A few of the distractions I face when I attempt to write are work, making plans with friends, and thinking about work I have to do for other classes. I also tend to procrastinate and waste time doing things like watching YouTube videos and playing video games. I think that it is possible for me to become a better writer, and that avoiding distractions would be part of it since being productive and writing a lot is an important part of improving your skill as a writer. Some steps I could take to prevent distractions and become a better writer would be: 1) Getting enough sleep. I have trouble focusing and remembering things if I haven’t gotten enough sleep the night before, which makes it difficult to do schoolwork. 2) Scheduling times to write. I try to do this but often procrastinate and end up doing assignments the night before. I then have to rush to finish, which makes the writing worse. 3) Writing in a quiet place. I can’t stand random noises when I’m trying to focus and get something done. It makes me really angry and I can’t write when I’m in a bad mood. 4) Walking my dog before I write. Taking a walk helps me clear my head and makes it easier to sort through my ideas, which helps me to have everything in order when I sit down to write. 5) Trying to get everything I need to do that day done before I start writing. That would help me be able to completely focus on writing without having to worry about unrelated things. 6) Taking less breaks. Once I take a break doing work, I am literally never going to want to go back to it. It’s really hard for me to start working in the first place, so once I’ve started I should just keep going until it’s done.
3 Comments
In the article “Why I Write” Joan Didion discusses her career as a writer and the motivation behind her work. She states that one of her primary reasons for writing is to comprehend her own thoughts; and that if she had had the ability to make sense of her own mind there would have been no reason for her to become a writer. She talks about how by writing about certain thoughts and pictures that “shimmer”, or stand out, to her, she is able to delve deeper into why these images seem significant to her and from there understand the story the pictures are trying to tell her.
I basically only write out of necessity. It’s rare that I write something that’s not required for college, like an essay or email. This isn’t how it always was, though; in high school I took creative writing and was a part of the staff for the school literary arts magazine, so I wrote short stories and poems all the time. I wrote these because I found writing calming and enjoyed creating something that I could be proud of and share with others. Once I left high school, however, I lost a lot of my motivation to write. One reason is that I haven’t had as much time to read things other than textbooks, and I used to get most of my inspiration to write through reading. Another reason is that without a class like creative writing or the school magazine forcing me to write for a deadline it’s hard to push myself to make progress on stories or poems; I’m a perfectionist, so nothing I add ever seems good enough and ends up getting deleted. I would like to get back into writing creatively again, since I feel a bit guilty when I read great stories or poems by other people and know I haven’t really made any progress as a writer since I haven’t been practicing. It’s hard not to procrastinate, though. |
Charlottebuckle up homestuck cause this is my blog Archives
May 2017
Categories
All
|