Handling Distraction

Today, I welcome the sweet Ifeoma Dennis to New Writer Wednesday. Ifeoma Dennis is a Caribbean medical student currently writing a young adult fantasy novel.  She’s taking her time, building her world with care. Not in a rush because she wants to put out a great story. I really admire her for that! Ifeoma is here to share her thoughts on the internet and discipline as a new writer!

Welcome Ifeoma (If-or-ma. Coolest name ever!).

Thank you for having me, Lizzy!

Here. This might be quite cliché but —-

Being a writer is 3% talent, and 97% not being distracted by the internet- Anonymous.

The internet is good.

I mean, it’s 99.9 percent less time-consuming to check the meaning of a word in freedictionary than flip the pages of your paperback Oxford Advanced Dictionary. Also, it’s easier to use the Translate features of Google (which I use frequently, being a fantasy writer in love with a healthy dose of latin) than using some old Latin-English dictionary.

Not to mention research. With the internet, we can view maps of places we’ve never been to, dig up what people wore centuries back, old cultures and the like- right from the comfort our bedrooms (or wherever your writing desk is).

And there’s Twitter, of course.

With Twitter, we can get a feel of agents – their personalities and what they want, know what genre is trending and what’s not. It keeps us informed…and happy. Happy, because we connect with other writers too. Without Twitter, I wouldn’t have met Lizzy who’s giving me the honor of guest-blogging for the very first time (YAY! I’m so thrilled to have you!)

But the question is- just how much of the internet is a healthy dose for our productivity as writers?

How long do you spend on Twitter, checking your feed, clicking on never-ending informative links which might lead you to click on more link s- just how long is too much?

If I can write 1000 words in one hour and spend one hour on Twitter, I guess I’m not less productive than the person who spends two hours writing 1000 words. It all depends on your rate of productivity. But never cheat yourself. If your word limit for a day is 1000 words, then you can do whatever you want with the rest of your time.

In my opinion, that’s the best way to handle all the distraction that comes with the internet- achieve your goal for the day, and reward yourself with Twitter or with blogging (because, let’s face it – most times we’re on the internet, it’s probably one or both of that two).

It’s still perfectly ok to check out Twitter or your reader before you start writing for the day (sometimes we get a lot of inspiration from those) but give yourself a time-limit and stick to it.

And while writing, we can be disciplined enough not to have that wandering hand that would click on Twitter. If it means switching off the internet, using K9 and letting someone else fix the password, going to a coffee shop and not connecting to the public internet…by all means, do that.

Because you want to be disciplined enough to finish your book. You know you want this. I want it, too.

I couldn’t agree more! Thank you so much Ifeoma for posting on New Writer Wednesday. Discipline is truly what it takes to succeed. You can network all you want, but if you don’t actually write your manuscript, you will never become an author!

Please follow Ifeoma on Twitter: @Ifeomadennis and on her blog: I.D.