Good Distractions

I’ve recently come to the conclusion that I love my home, but I can’t write there anymore. There are just too many distractions, but that’s almost too negative a word because I’m very fortunate to have everything that’s competing for my attention in that apartment. Let’s start with the beautiful girlfriend, who manages to capture my attention in so many different ways. If I’m lucky she’s batting her eyelashes at me with a grin on her face. How do you write with that going on? I’d close the door to the study, except I don’t have a study. I write in the living room and she’s always about twenty feet away no matter what room she’s in. Anyway, not the worst problem to have, although sometimes those bedroom eyes narrow and get angry, most often for silly things like me not wanting to walk to the food co-op with her, or scheduling a weekend of drinking with buddies over a Saturday engagement that she is “100% positive I told you about you douche bag. Don’t even think about it…you’re fucking going.” Sorry Cake Man and Zombie, I don’t think I can make the DC trip. At least my next favorite distraction never gets angry or talks back. Oh Xbox.

I think Xbox 360 was made by God as a test to see just how determined some people really are in their pursuits. I’ve shot that terrorist through his red beret so many god damn times, but I can’t stop going back to shoot him again. It doesn’t matter if I’ve finished the game. I can still play it through on expert. Funny thing was last weekend my girlfriend was in New Orleans, so I actually managed to get two hours of decent writing done one day. I decided to reward myself, and for some reason the best way I could think to do so was to fire up the Xbox to defend virtual United States for six hours straight. I watched the sun go down, but didn’t want to get up to turn on my living room light. I’m just glad I got the girlfriend before I got the Xbox. I hear girls don’t dig guys sitting in their boxers, wearing headsets, and talking to their buddies across the city with videogame controllers in their hands.

“Are you talking to them or playing with them?”

“Both! What don’t you understand!?”

Have you ever been writing and making progress on a scene, and then suddenly the next moment you’re looking at porn and you don’t even remember how you got there? Cake Man says he disconnects the internet when he writes. I’m just going to assume the scenario that makes me giggle the most. You should do the same.

Anyway, to get back on track I’ll just say there are a lot of things at my apartment that I like, but they aren’t helping my writing much these days. So I’ve decided to return to a practice I abandoned several months ago and start writing at work again after work hours. In most cases once the clock strikes five I’m still in work mode and have a get shit done type of mentality. Some people have told me they don’t have the discipline for an after work routine at the office, but I think it takes more discipline to keep motivated for writing once you arrive back home at your sanctuary. This is the practice that led to some of the best writing I’ve experienced. Since I’ve gone back to working at the office I can say for certain that I’ve moved past my recent slump. It’s a beautiful thing to see that you’ve written four new pages in a day when it took you all of last month to reach that number. If anybody out there has been having trouble with turning out pages and you have a work environment that would allow you to stay on for an hour or two to write, I’d strongly recommend you give it a try. If you hate your job, knowing that your workplace has been a creative temple for your craft could give you a new appreciation for your space. No matter how much I might dislike arriving at my desk early in the morning, I’ll always know that this is the space where I wrote one of my strongest scripts, and that means something to me.

An author's view of the Internet as a distraction

Coincidentally hitting the same topic I brought up earlier this week, The New York Times Paper Cuts book blog interviews writer Charles D'Ambrosio, asking him about the evil, evil Internets as part of their "Stray Questions" series. His answer's pretty interesting:

How much time — if any — do you spend on the Web? Is it a distraction or a blessing?

I’m coming to the conclusion that any time is too much time. My life hasn’t improved at all with the advent of the Internet; if anything, I’ve turned into a worse misfit. And change isn’t ipso facto good. I’m away from Portland for the year, but prior to leaving I’d been preparing to build a writing shed out in my backyard, with no electricity. Just a kerosene lantern and a tiny wood stove of the sort you see in ice-fishing huts with a crooked hobo stove-pipe coming out the roof. The world is too much with us. Wordsworth published that 200 years ago. Now I need a hideaway in back of my house just to feel at home. The Internet makes me feel desperate. The spiritual toll isn’t worth the few conveniences. It’s a sordid boon, like that Xmas when you didn’t get what you really wanted, and now that special experience of disappointment is upon us around the clock.

How do you avoid distractions while writing?

Jacket Copy, the book blog of The L.A. Times, has an interesting post up today discussing how writers deal with electronic distractions -- the Internet, cell phones, iPods, etc. -- when trying to get some writing done.

Here's a quote within a quote. Very meta:

Author and editor Jeff Vandermeer explains the drastic measures he's taken (via Shaken & Stirred) to keep himself from being distracted by the big wide Internet that hides behind his computer screen:

Okay, I’ll admit it: work on my new novel, Finch, is going well because every morning my long-suffering yet often amused wife Ann hides the router box and my cellphone. I get up around 7 a.m., I have my breakfast and watch something innocuous like BBC News or Frasier for about half an hour, and then get down to work. Around noon I take a break to get some lunch, then go back to it, usually at that point editing or organizing notes. Around 2:30 I call Ann on our landline and she tells me where the router box and the cellphone are (it has Internet access on it) so I can finish up the afternoon with necessary emails and other work, before going to the gym.

Seems like a pretty hardcore way to avoid distraction -- but if it works, it works. This post kind of ties into my last entry, which dealt with what music people listen to while writing. Music walks a thin line -- it's either a great help or a giant distraction. I think the same can be said for the Internet. I can't count the number of times it's proven to be an excellent research tool. On the flipside, I also can't count the times it's provided a nice escape from having to actually write, allowing me instead to cruise my Google Reader or waste time watching YouTube videos or reading KissingSuzyKolber.

What do you think? How do you deal with electronic distractions when you're trying to write?