10 blogs on how an author can get distracted – BLOG ONE!
The life of a writer is filled with a lot of uncertainty. On top of the pressure to write actively every day, there is the added stress of promoting your novel, cover creation, marketing, and social media updating.
My main weakest points fall under the same category: marketing. I have no funds to pay for ads. I’m inconsistent with my social media promoting and updating as well as maintaining my blog updates. I don’t have the means to travel and do book signings.
My other weak points are: distractions!
Here is my list of the top 10 ways an author can get distracted while writing her next novel:
BLOG ONE:
A Death in the family – [image error]
I’ve had major authors stop writing after they have lost a loved one. I’ve waited and waited years for an author to release another book only for them to disappear from publishing. The loss of someone in your life has a major impact on you from all sides. Not only is there having to interact with family, there’s coming to terms with knowing that person is gone. Wondering if you could have done more, find more ways to spend time with them, anything you could have changed to somehow make that loss meaningful or less painful and there really isn’t anything except time to grieve and let that wound scar over. I lost my grandmother in August 2018 and I’m still dealing with that. It’s thrown off so many things and I’m trying to fight my way out of this quagmire of emotion.
TWO:
KIDS!!!
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If you follow my author pages on Facebook, you’ve probably seen a post or ten about how hard it is to focus and write when you have a little one running around. I’m sure even as they get older, children make for the ultimate writing distraction. Between them climbing on things they shouldn’t, to tears from them falling, messes they make as they explore, needing our attention, and basic needs like food, sleep, and cleaning up, it’s a never ending cycle of distractions and interruptions.
I wish I could be wise and offer the best solution but just as important as it is to write, your children come first. There’s no way around how much they need you and how important it is to be there for them. Those little years only last so long!! I give my son something he loves to play with and pop on some cartoons to grind out an hour of semi-focused productivity. It’s not perfect but it is the main way I get anything done. If you have a friend that you trust, planning play dates may be another way to get an hour or two of kid distraction free writing. Actually, I’m going to have to write another post of 10 ways to find time to write with kids around.
THREE:
HEALTH!
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As we get older, we find that our bodies tend need a lot more care. As someone who suffers from allergies, I find managing my health to be an ever changing experience. An injury can seriously impact and distract a writer’s goal. I’ve been dealing with a hip injury that makes sitting difficult for any length of time. Basic life activities have to be planned out in short bursts so I can get things done before I’m down and out from the pain.
This injury has meant a lot of doctor visits. I’ve got some serious angst from going from a really active person to having to time out things like going to the grocery store, doing dishes, cleaning, or just an activity with my son. Any one of those activities means I need a few hours to recuperate afterwards, sometimes it’s a whole day depending on how long I sat or walked for. Advil has become a staple in my medicine cabinet and purse.
Your health can be an enormous distraction from your writing. Now with flu season in full swing and having a young child in my house, it’s not just my health that can act as a distraction. My son was hit with a stomach bug just before Thanksgiving and I spent a week focused on nursing him back to health.
My suggestion would be to stock up on pineapple juice, bits, chunks, and smoothies and do what you can to stay healthy. In regards to my injury, using my cell phone is my go-to writing tool and planning short bursts of writing time, lol. None of my novels would have been finished if I didn’t write them on my cell phone.
FOUR:
ARTS and CRAFTS!
This morning while I was mentally beating myself up for falling so far behind on my writing and updating of my blog, I tried to figure out where exactly had I fallen off track. It took me a few minutes but I was able to trace it back to an idea. Yes, that simple – an idea – which led to another idea and another idea and then my creative muse went a little wild.
She took off like a kid set free in a candy store.
I had been neglecting my creative outlets outside of writing. I don’t know about other authors but I’m a fairly artsy person. I’ve got a ton of art projects and it seems my soul isn’t happy unless it’s creating many things at once.
My desire to create certain things and my ideas led me to getting sucked in to finding art programs online. Then there was learning how to use the art programs. Then I got stuck on not having the right technology to create these ideas with and desperately wanting a tablet so I could lay down and have more than 20 minutes to try and learn something before the pain forced me to sit down. Then I got distracted by wanting to finish the picture book I want to publish. And then… and then… here I am more than a month later so far behind and the proud owner of some resin because, yes, I found another art project I wanted to create. Plus, I made a cell phone holder out of a sock for my son.
When I said my craft muse took over, I wasn’t kidding. It’s almost an understatement for what happened. Once she was fed a teeny tiny bit of creative freedom, she broke loose and went on a whirlwind spree of ADHD crafting. I also got sucked into making homemade fudge. Yeah, I need to find a way to better keep that muse fed and well fed for me to be able to not get lost in a crafting haze of glitter.
FIVE:
HOLIDAYS!!! [image error]
We are coming out the end side of the Holidays. As a single mom, planning for my son’s Christmas has taken over for most of November and December. I’m on an extreme budget and that means I had to do three months of budgeting to figure out what to get him. Not only that, his birthday is six days after Christmas. So it’s twice the planning. Then there was figuring out holiday meals because he’s a picky eater and I still wanted to do something special. The stress of planning for the holidays can definitely be a distraction. I spent a lot of time searching online for gift ideas, pricing, reviews, and even shopping online with my son so he could actually get something he wanted instead of me guessing and hoping he would like it. Christmas shopping is one of the more time consuming distractions that can waylay a writing. At least it is only a temporary distraction!
SIX:
BIRTHDAYS!
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As mentioned in number five, my son’s birthday is six days after Christmas – on yet another holiday – New Year’s Eve. Trying to plan and keep gifts separate so he can have the experience of opening gifts on his birthday is tricky!
Planning for birthdays, throwing a party, getting gifts, making the cake, deciding where the party will be, what the food will be, sending out invites, worrying will enough people show, will you have enough food, should you plan on party games, a theme – CLEANING YOUR HOUSE! It’s a lot to think about and can easily consume time you could be writing.
SEVEN:
SOCIAL MEDIA!!!
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This is one of the more obvious ways a writer can get distracted. Falling into scrolling your Facebook feed, getting sucked into a Mom’s group discussion, watching another Cat video, chatting with friends on messenger, playing games, even just updating your social media can be hours of distraction and take a writer away from her novel. Not clicking that play button and setting the phone down is crucial to deter getting distracted. Seeing as how I use my cell phone to write my novels, my will power is tested constantly.
EIGHT:
BURN OUT!
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This kind-of relates to most of this list. Burn out is serious and real. It will drain a writer of ideas, it will leave them wanting to do absolutely nothing but curl up and not think. I might have 50 gazillion ideas waiting for me to create them but I think I burned out my muse by publishing three books in 3 months time. There is a LOT that goes into publishing a book aside from writing it. Creating the cover, editing, promoting it, reviews, updating your social media, sending out ARC’s, promoting it some more, adding it to your author pages, more editing… it’s not just a click of a button and you’re done. When you add in all the other distractions I’ve listed, burn out is almost a given. The pressure to finish book two and write the next one is hanging out and edging me on but I know if I didn’t take a break, I wouldn’t be happy with what I wrote. I like my characters too much to give them my burned out distracted lack of focus.
Be sure you’re not trying to do too much at once. My goal going forward is to try and get back on a schedule and to start a schedule for my social media – most importantly my blog. I hope starting today, I’ll be able to post a blog a day and I have a plan to make that happen without getting burned out. I’ll keep you post as I go on whether or not my plan is successful!
NINE:
DOUBT!
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Doubt is an insidious distraction. I’ll be writing away and suddenly start to worry is this scene dragging? Am I taking too long to get to the point? Is my character still funny? Where am I going with this? How do my characters find a way to kill the bad guy? Is this original? Unique? Are people going to read this? How am I going to finish this on time? Am I not paying enough attention to my son? Is that font too small? That chapter too long? Is this boring??? How do I come up with another unique way to say Holy leaping sulfur bugs, Hades’ third nipple, and steaming unicorn farts of glitter?
Did that author just publish a book with the same idea as mine???!!! That’s it. You’re done. Throw it all away. There’s no point in finishing it now.
The list is endless. The doubt bottomless. The thing that got me through finishing my first novel was to just repeat – Don’t stop. Just keep writing. You can fix it later – take it out if it’s not needed or change it after you finish your novel. Now, I just need to find loads of number ten on this list.
TEN:
TIME!!!
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Last but my biggest distraction is time! Finding the time to write, focusing and not getting lost in a game or TV show or debate on Facebook. Setting aside time in the morning to write or late at night after my son has gone to bed is crucial for me stay on track and reach a daily writing goal. Setting goals really helps stay on track too. Picking a certain number of days to have a certain number of words written helps keep your time management in check.
This is an overwhelming thing for me to manage. I sat down to write this blog thinking I could type it out and 13 others in a half hour. With all my distractions, I’m staring at two hours having gone by, an empty cracker sleeve, and this one blog isn’t finished yet. I even planned ahead and got all the images first and made a list of 10 things that distracts writers. But, I’ve gotten up about five times to eat, changed an image, almost lost the blog when I somehow hit the back button, stopped to see about 20 different things my son has made for me and there goes the time.
Not only that, Daylight Savings Time screwed me over the last two months. That one hour meant I got locked into a horrid sleeping pattern where my son was waking up at 3am, 4am, or before 5 am and I have been a cranky, dead inside walking zombie momma because of lack of sleep. We’ve been eating lunch at 9 am, having dinner by 1 or 2 pm and falling asleep around 6 pm. I swear, it’s not fun. I’m tired. So tired… today we woke up at 3:45 am. I’ve already cleaned the toy room, done the dishes, discovered how far I’ve fallen behind on my blog, researched a bunch of stuff, made lunch, got my son a snack, and some other things I don’t remember and at the time I’m writing this, it’s 11:20 am. I’ve been up almost 8 hours already and could use a nap.
Finding uninterrupted time and not getting distracted is key to staying on track!
So, there you have it folks. There’s just 10 major ways an author can get distracted while writing that novel you’ve been waiting for 
