The Greatest Computer Program in the World

I've been doing a bunch of appearances and author visits lately, to promote my "middle-school punk-rock detective novel", The Secret Life of Ms. Finkleman. I spoke to some newly minted graduates of the MFA program at Lesley College (all of whom know more about writing than I do) and I visited to a local elementary school, where I wore a nice sweater and used my thoughtful-listening face.

I bet you a frabillion dollars the question that writers get the most, at these sorts of things, is "Where do you get your ideas?"

There is good answer to this question.

But I do have an answer to the second-most-frequently-asked question: "How do you make yourself get work done?"

I think people, just in general, find it so hard to get any work done, that they can't imagine how a person with no set structure manages to produce anything–even if it means writing dopey speculative fiction about 19th century Russian robots.

To this question I have an answer, and that answer is The Greatest Computer Program in the World.

That program is called, simply, Freedom, it was made up by a guy named Fred, and it costs ten dollars. And all it does is turn off the internet connection on your computer. you decide how long to turn it off, between a minute and eight hours. Once you've activated Freedom, the only way to deactivate it and get online is turn off your computer and restart—a sufficient psychological barrier, hopefully, to keep most of us from cheating.

The internet's effectiveness as a time-wasting device is exhaustively documented. If you're a writer—especially if you're a writer, like most of us, with a million non-writing-related responsibilities—and you've got to squeeze in your writing time, an hour here, three hours there…you have got to get this computer program. If you have any questions about it, you can email Fred; he's super nice.

One way to think of the writer's career is as an endless battle between the elevated, responsible part of your character, that wants to get work done, create something beautiful, and entertain or educate the world–and, on the other hand, the lazy, distracted part of your character, that wants to send emails, write status updates, and find out who got eliminated on Top Chef last night.

I'm telling you, this computer program is the greatest ally that your Elevated, Responsible Guy will ever find against the Slacker Guy.

That's the best advice I've got. If you want to know where to find ideas, you're on your own.