I write full-time these days (or, as my parents insist on calling it, I’m “unemployed”) and have basically no responsibilities (like pets, little people or husbands) and so you’d think I’d have LOADS of time to write, right? I would too. Yet somehow when I sit down in the morning and open my Mac, it all seems to slip away. Where does it go? And how can I get it back, or stop it from going there in the first place?
I write – or try to – at a small desk in a corner of my bedroom. The desk has to be small because my bedroom is, and my bedroom is small because when you move out of home when you’re 19 to live with a boy, come back again when you’re 21 because rent is expensive, leave again when you’re 22 to work abroad and come back again (again) when you’re 26 because your US visa expired, you get stuck with the box room. But I digress.
Looking at this desk – compact, piled with papers, home to a New York Starbucks mug filled with pens and pencils, overlooked by a notice-board hanging above it on the wall and beside that, a sign that says GIVE ME COFFEE AND NO ONE GETS HURT – you might get the impression that it’s your standard, run-of-the-mill work station. But although imperceptible to the human eye, this desk sits amidst a wrinkle in the space/time continuum – nay, a vortex – where time mysteriously disappears at a frightening rate. I sit down at it around ten every weekday morning and yet by six that afternoon or a whole eight hours later, I never seem to have got much done.
Where does the time go? And how can you stop it going there?
1. The Everything Machine
I was watching a behind-the-scenes documentary about TV writers recently and one of them said he’d get more done if his computer didn’t also happen to be The Everything Machine. How easy did those typewriting types have it back in the day, eh? One minute you’re just checking your e-mails to see if anything important has come through, and the next you’re watching your a Dylan Moran sketch on YouTube – your fifth in a row. The internet just eats time, and you’re powerless to stop it.
Freedom is a computer program for Macs and PCs that disables your internet connection for a specified period of time and will only allow your interrupt that specified period by turning on and off your computer. With some high profile writer-type users (Nora Ephron, Nick Hornby, Dave Eggers, to name but a few) and a price tag of only $10 (about €7) it really is money well spent.
But perhaps you’re like me, constantly Googling odd things like “Hong Kong’s Chunking Mansions” or “define: mesonoxian” (that’s “pertaining to midnight”, by the way) while you write, and so a complete internet cut off isn’t really your cup of tea. Enter Anti-Social, a program that prevents you from accessing sites like Facebook and Twitter while keeping your access to the rest of the internet intact. It too is cheap – only $15 (about €10) – and can only be turned off with a shut down and restart which, it website claims, it is deterrent enough because “the deep sense of shame” you’ll feel at giving in will stop you doing just that. Anti-Social is currently only available for Macs.
2. Procrastinating
Why is it that when I’m not writing, all I want to do is write, and when I am writing, all I want to do is anything else but? Or why is it that when I sit down to do some writing, it takes me anywhere from ten minutes to two hours to actually get round to doing it? Mastering the overwhelming urge to procrastinate is the difference between a writing hobbyist and a writing professional. As one of my faves Harlan Coben said (although he may have been quoting Stephen King), “Amateurs wait for inspiration. The rest of us just get to work.”
Indeed, but it’s easier said than done. Before you can get writing, you find you have to rearrange everything in your filing cabinet until it’s just so, or put that load of clothes into the machine, or hoover the whole house from top to bottom. (I should say that these are the symptoms of an energetic procrastinator. For me it goes more like, “Just one more episode of Friends that I’ve already seen upwards of 100 times and then I swear I’m going to get off this sofa.”)
Ask yourself why don’t I want to do this right now? Sometimes we’re just being lazy, and sometimes that’s allowed. Or maybe you’re tired, and need a power nap. (Or an espresso.) But sometimes it’s because we fear the dreaded blank page, or because we’re not very excited about what we’re in the midst of writing. One writer I know recently started a very exciting new project and she said working on its first draft was like being in love – she wanted to spend as much time with it as possible and forgot about nearly everything else so she could. I read in an interview with Belinda Bauer, author of the amazing Darkside, that when her writing is going well wild horses couldn’t drag her away from her desk but when it’s going bad, they couldn’t drag her away from the fridge.
So when you feel that familiar urge to do anything else but write, ask yourself: do you not want to write, or do you not want to write this?
3. Writers Can’t Just Write Anymore
If I could live in any other place and time as a writer, it would be Paris in the 1920s. (But I’d be sure to have money for this time-travel, and not do a George Orwell on it.) Not only because Paris is my favorite city in the world, but because back then, all the literati did – or seemed to do – was write, drink, eat and meet up with each other so they could write, drink and eat together.
Nowadays the writing life is very different, especially if you’re starting out now. Don’t get me wrong: I am forever grateful that tools like social media and self-publishing have been able to give me a career of sorts without relying on anyone else or even having to leave The Box Room, but no one can deny that building an online platform – as you are expected to do these days – is time consuming. Lots of fun, but time consuming.
Take today for instance. The writing I’m supposed to be doing is another section of a top secret e-book I’ll be releasing soon (she says mysteriously). I’ve been at my computer since 10am, but it’s now nearly 1pm and I still haven’t got round to it. Instead, I’ve been responding to reader messages and blog comments, answering some interview questions via email, chasing up a query I had with Amazon about my product listing, posting links to my Facebook page and writing blog posts. (Yes, including this one!) I enjoy doing it, but that e-book isn’t going to write itself. But if I don’t do it, no one is going to know about me or my e-book, so writing it would be a waste of time. Both endeavors need time, but balancing them can be difficult.
Now I have to go and watch one of my favorite writing-related videos on Youtube. Then I’ll start writing. I swear...
