How do you stay focused on your writing?

humming birdDear Writers,

How do you stay focused on writing and not get distracted by all the shiny stuff? Today I woke up and told myself I was going to have a productive day. I was going to focus on writing and get this book organized! The current stage of my book is a “crappy first draft” of writing sprawl.

Instead of sitting down to write, I found myself logging on to Twitter, ‘just for a minute’ I told myself. Next thing I knew, 35 minutes had passed, I had clicked on a bunch of links, found a new program I wanted to try, was all over the place. I kept scrolling through my timeline, catching up on what all my friends were doing, and reading all the interesting posts they were linking to. Finally, one tweet caught my attention and reminded me I was planning to write today and not dawdle away my day on social media.

That tweet was from Tamara Holland. It read, “Belated huge heartfelt thanks to the wild-assed muse who visited BeanUpTheNoseArt last night & downloaded her stuff thru my fingers”. I almost responded with, “can you please send your muse my way when you are done with her?”.

Instead, I kept scrolling through my timeline getting sucked back in to Never-never land. That is when I saw a tweet from Success and Chocolate about a new program called TrapIt and was like, ‘Oh! I have to try that!’  Then the little voice in my head said, “Wait! Not another new program. Stay focused. Save it for later.”  As I was having this conversation in my head, I read another tweet from Tamara addressed to Success and Chocolate that said, “Uh-oh. Is this another place, like Instagram, that I should-but-should-not-go?”. That is when I put my phone down and began to write.

As difficult as it is for me to do this, I believe the best way to find my muse is to turn off all distractions and dedicate a certain amount of time each day to writing. No Internet! The only screen allowed is a Word document.

I am off to start organizing my crappy first draft and follow up with some of my interviewees!

What do you do to stay focused on your writing? How do you avoid the temptation of the internet and other shiny things?

PS. I still want to check out Trapit and will. 😉 @iPeggy the blogger behind Success and Chocolate is the expert on new cool programs. I guess for me it is all about finding balance and scheduling time to write.

 

The image above is a from a page created by me during one of Marilyn LoRusso’s Vision Book Art Workshops.

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