WIP Challenge Check-in, Day 12 -- Thursday

[linaewen]

Hello on Thursday!  What kind of a writing day are you having today?

• I thought about my fic once or twice
• I wrote
• I did some planning and/or research
• I edited
• I've sent my fic off to my beta
• I posted today!
• I'm taking a break
• I had other plans

We've been talking lately about dealing with our writing when we get out of a routine, and that seems to lead naturally into how we go about dealing with distractions (something I'm personally having trouble with at the moment!).  Do you ever run into the following problem?

 

 

For discussion -- How easy is it for you to get side-tracked when you are determined to write?  What kinds of things to you find yourself doing instead of writing?  Do you have any advice for those of us who have trouble with procrastinating and getting distracted?

Comments

[linaewen]

I'm having a thoroughly out-of-my-routine week, and I'm failing pretty famously at getting back on track. I did think of my fic once or twice yesterday -- I even opened on challenge fic that's due soon in order to start writing, then realized I had more time than I thought to work on it, so I quit in favor of procrastinating! Bad Lin! ;-)

If I can avoid distractions, I plan to devote the evening to getting something going, in hopes of reporting an actual word count tomorrow!

Sometimes I can be very focused, but if Real Life is a bit stressful, then I'm easily distracted from the effort it takes to get something started with writing. It's sometimes easier to play a computer game or read articles about my favorite sports team or even just surf randomly, than it is to buckle down to work on something that takes a bit of thought. However, once I catch myself and label my actions for what they are -- procrastination -- I usually can force myself to get down to work. Once I start, I'm fine and can really get somewhere with my writing. Unfortunately, it's the starting that can get away from me.

[littlebutfierce]

Work was slow this morning so I snuck in my 750 Words there. :D But that also means I have pretty much no recollection of what I wrote, ha! Still, it's keeping my writing gears moving.

Today I've tried to do some editing but largely failed, partly because of useful distraction (writing a post about a blog I might be starting w/some friends), partly because of useless procrastination (the "hit refresh over & over on my reading page," check my RSS reader again, etc. type).

Sometimes I just give in & accept being distracted. I'm not really fantastic at fighting procrastination when it comes to writing fic. Part of it for me, I think, is just keeping the wheels oiled -- writing my 750 words every day -- so that it is easier to stay in the writing frame of mind. It lowers the barrier just that much more to getting really stuck into a fic. When I don't get distracted anyway, that is. :/

[juliet316]

VERY easy. I installed my graphics software this week and have been lost in making icons.

[jagnikjen]

I thought about my fic once or twice, but the sickies are making me fuzzy. It's hard to focus on any of my WIPs at the moment.

When I'm determined to write, I am usually able to pull it off.

[taelle]

Trying to get back on track after holidays. Writing-wise it includes figuring out what to work on next. (and, oh horror, trying to figure out plots enough to hold long stories)

[sharpiefan]

I thought about my fic. And panicked a bit. Does that count?

(It's about 750 words into a chapter that hopefully will end up being about 2500 words long when I post it. And I've been working on it since January last year - or at least, that's when the previous chapter got posted!)

[lilly_c]

Wrote and posted in the last hour or so, only a drabble but I can use it for one of my prompt_in_a-box prompts from this month's round :) it's not great by any stretch but I'll take 144 words over 0 words any day of the week, also had to ask the mods to make a fandom tag for me :$ it's also good to get something written that isn't a 2500 word essay, it is quite nice to leave the academic thinking for a couple of hours after a week of near constant essay editing.

I do get easily distracted although part of that is owing to having dyslexia and dyspraxia. When I'm playing iquiz on my ipod or doing random searches, I find that jotting a few words or sentences down in the A5 notebook that is near my laptop 90% of the time helps me focus because by handwriting something even if it ultimately becomes useless it's there and it is words even though they aren't on the screen or even in the final version I post. I also use a couple of assistive software packages that MS Office 2010 isn't too fond of :(

Advice try and keep a small notebook, either A5 or A6 size near your computer or bed and if you can take it with you. If you can't take it with you use your phone (mine has a old version of word on it) the message creator on older phones works just as good :)

[crowdog66]

I wrote (~2550 words), edited AND posted (Chapter 7 of "Solstice and Equinox" and a short story in the same ficverse, "Caution and Desire").

It's very rare that I settle down to write and get so distracted that I end up doing something else entirely, mainly because I usually don't have trouble being inspired (which tends to enhance concentration). The only advice I'd offer is advice I've found useful in any situation where I have to focus: keep turning the mind back to what you're doing, hammering out one word after another, even if you think it's crap. Sometimes you have to work through the shit to get to the good stuff. :)

[pinstripefedora]

Well, work ate me for the past week or so, so I was too busy having anxiety attacks to get much writing done. Things seem to have settled down for the most part, so today I managed to sit down for the first time and really get back to writing. I realized in reading over what I'd written so far that I had just randomly abandoned a scene about two-thirds of the way through, presumably to work on others I found more interesting, so I decided to go back and work on that today. I got in about 250 or 300 words, but I'm a little frustrated because I can tell I only have a very little bit left to write in order to finish out this scene, but my brain has told me in no uncertain terms that it is exhausted and therefore will not give me so much as one more word. So I guess I'll have to wait until tomorrow. Curses.

I did a little research today, too, which totally distracted me. All I meant to do was check one little fact that stupidly did not even occur to me to look up before starting (so naturally it was something that had the potential to completely destroy the concept of the entire story), and the next thing I know, it's two hours later. That's the hardest distraction for me to recover from, because I keep telling myself that, technically, this is all in service of my story and it will be that much better because of it.

Most other distractions I'm pretty good at fending off, even if I only manage to do so by telling myself, "okay, write one paragraph and then you can get on tumblr," or whatever.