Distraction Free Writing?
My first week with a (not so) new device.
Writing is hard.
In case you didn’t already know this, I wanted to make it plain: creative writing is difficult. Add in all the other responsibilities one might have (husband, father, and coach in my case) and sometimes it seems impossible. Opportunities arise every now and then to give you a necessary boost in production, like NaNoWriMo1, but said boosts don’t last forever.
For the third year in a row I have failed to hit the coveted 50,000 word mark. For the third year in a row you could say “life got in the way.” For the third year in a row I could be upset at the above, but I’m not. I was able to do a lot of solid work this past month, despite not hitting the “goal.”
Approximately 12,000 words of Ennead’s worldbook are complete. This marks the first time that all of my disparate notes on the earliest age in Amashik’s known history have been cobbled together into a cohesive story. Plenty more words to be written before this book is ready for the eyes of another, but the tough part is out of the way.
Books 11 and 12 have been sitting untouched for almost two years now. With only two pages left in production of book 10 it was time to get back to comic script writing. I’ve decided that all of Volume 2 will release as one book so I’ve added some storylines into the two remaining books in the volume (get ready for more Ngia’wi and Do’foli, as well as some other folks you’ll meet soon enough). While the new versions of these scripts aren’t done just yet I’m happy with some of these new decisions.
I bought a 20 year old word processor and cranked out two chapters for my upcoming novel in less than a week.
That last point warrants a page break.
I’ve been planning a series of novels set in this world for a while now but have struggled to start. Yet after waffling a bit during the middle/end of NaNoWriMo something clicked:
I have too many tabs open, both in my brain and on my web browser. To write these newsletters I log into my Substack Dashboard and write them while online. Other than this tab I currently have 6 others (in this window) that are open:
Plan your self-publishing journey
Settlement Name Generator
Dragonkin Name Generator
A forum on travel during the middle ages
A google search for the Hadal Zone
Pirate Ship for Kickstarter Fulfillment
Each of these tabs represents a possibility to spiral in the best ways. I could get creatively lost in developing a new settlement in the far east of Amashik where a family of dragonkin created a vast empire that has yet to be discovered by any humans. I could lose myself in the idea that a fantastical Hadal Zone exists in the Blue Expanse and is home to sea monsters and maybe even a race of sea-dwelling humanoids. I might just decide that this is the time to sign up for Pirate Ship as I prep for a year’s end round of Kickstarter fulfillment because shipping costs so damn much.
Maybe I’ve done all of this already? Maybe I’m doing it now? I am very easily distracted, so who knows?
I began looking into tools for writers who need help with distractions.
I came across some newer devices that were upwards of $400 that were absolutely what I needed, but I couldn’t justify spending the money. So I went searching for budget options. I came across a device that I actually “owned” while in middle school. The Alphasmart 3000. My school gave these to us instead of traditional laptops back in the day so that we could learn to type and all that. I remember lugging one of these around in my overstuffed bookbag (yes, I say bookbag… what is this backpack of which you speak?) like it was yesterday.
When it arrived in the mail I was stoked and jumped write in (see what I did there?). A story that had been trapped in my head for months came pouring out of me. Without the ability to do anything but type I was able to just work on the story in front of me. As soon as I’m done with this newsletter I am swapping my laptop for my Alphasmart so I can get back to it.
The device itself is a bit clunky but it works as advertised and I have zero regrets about spending the $75 it cost me to get it. I feel like a kid again when using it and that’s super important when you’re trying to do the whole creative writing thing… ya know, because it’s hard. But it’s easier for children than it is for us with all our aged wisdom. We know too much to allow ourselves to seamlessly create. We think we know what “the right way” to do it, so when we “mess up” we send ourselves down a dizzying path of fits and starts.
Kids on the other hand typically don’t know any better and just create for the sake of creation. That is until some adult comes along and fucks it all up with their rules and deadlines. If you think a new method, challenge, or device can help you get back to creating for creation’s sake then run with it. Because in the end, writing is hard.
JL
P.S.-I buried the lead again, but I am launching a Kickstarter next month for a special edition of Volume 1. Sign up for notifications today.
National Novel Writing Month
Good to hear you like the Alphasmart -- I've been going back and forth about getting one! Going to have to hunt one down now...
Super smart. I've never used such a device before, though - I see there's a "computer" label on the right hand side, so you can export a txt or doc file? How does that work? It would kind of kill me to only see those few lines at a time. But one of the other universal "distractions" in writing is constantly rereading and reediting what we've already written. So in the short term, maybe a good thing.
Oh, and not that the vast, VAST majority of people don't make the same mistake - but it's "burying the LEDE", not "lead". It's one of those misheard/misunderstood phrases like "You've got another think coming" (which is usually misquoted as "thing") or "For all intents and purposes" (which most think is "intensive purposes"), etc.