Better
It is better to have dial-up than nothing, but better still to have broadband! Which, somewhat precariously, I do have again.
On the plus side, the loss of internet access for six days means that I now sit down at my computer with a small pean of praise ringing in my head for the joy of instant internet connections and fast download times. On the minus side I was amazed to find how much time I must waste on Facebook and Goodreads and checking my emails and so on. I kid myself that all this is research time, but it’s not. I produced nearly twice the normal volume of words when those distractions were removed from me.
Even so, I’m not going to find an attic to work in. Life is for living, not suffering, and I love being able to look at Lolcats while I’m wrestling with abstruse problems like whether it is better to say ‘he sank’ or ‘he descended’ when writing about a pearl diver. I adore my email and the constant communication from other writers – sometimes it’s all that keeps me going, and their experiences, comments and support are invaluable. So despite the shock of realising that I’m an idle bugger quite a lot of the time, no new resolutions here.
1 Comment
Jim Murdoch
14th November 2007I’ve just written a blog telling younger authors how lucky they are to have this wonderful tool at their disposal, to have access to a world full of struggling writers who can’t decide if their diver sank or descended either; mine plummeted. It won’t be posting it for a while yet, I’m ahead on my blogs at the moment and I’m restricting myself to two posts per week.
Knowing you’re not alone is great but writing is still a solitary occupation. Sitting in an attic on your own is something you might try. I did. It was hot and I just let myself get distracted by other things.
Just close down your e-mail and your feed reader and set yourself a target, be it number of words or a fixed period of time, and then use your e-mails etc as a treat, a reward for being good. There is nothing coming down that wire that won’t wait a couple of hours.