One of the biggest challenges to finishing a novel (or a short story, or a blog post) is finding the time to sit down and write. And then, even when you have the time, there are other traps. Like, in the olden days writers would stare out the window and daydream, their pencils or pens suspended over dog-eared spiral notebooks. Now, they can toggle between tabs on their web browsers, or maybe play a quick game of mah jong or Freecell, all in the name of finding just the right word or planning the next plot twist.
Because really, eBay makes a great thesaurus. And nothing is better than Facebook for helping you understand your character's goals and motivations. My own personal favorite and newest obsession is pinterest. I can spend a ridiculous amount of time looking at all the pretty pictures. Time that I've carved out of the rest of my life, when I'm not working my full time job or running the kids from swim practice to cello lessons or whatever. Time that I should be actually writing.
I justify it by telling myself I'm doing research, looking for pictures that inspire my newest work-in-progress...on which very little actual progress is happening, although I do have a nice collection of pictures that might inspire some writing if I ever stop looking at pictures long enough to actually write something. And just so you know I'm not fooling, here's a link to my Storyboard.
I think you'll agree that pictures are pretty, and I hope someday their story will get told!
Peace,
Liv
I spend way too much time on icanhascheezburger, damnyouautocorrect...pretty much anything that will make me laugh. And my email program stays open the entire time I'm writing, so as soon as an email arrives I'm all, Oooh! An email! And then I click over and find it's a coupon or some such thing.
ReplyDeleteHeh. That sound you hear is me refreshing my email, in case a new one has come in.
ReplyDelete