It's amazing how quickly you can get accustomed to certain things. Like how quickly I became accustomed to living by myself and being able to plant myself in my living room, on the couch, and be secure in the knowledge that I very likely wouldn't be disturbed by anyone or anything. That's not to say I was able to work with no distractions, after all the internet still exists, but my thought processes weren't routinely interrupted and I just got used to a certain level of non-interference. I lost all of that when I moved back home to write this book. (Almost to 30,000 words, by the way!)
Living in a house with four other people and six animals means that there's virtually no time of day when I won't have an interruption except after midnight so that's when an awful lot of my writing has been happening. It's frustrating and I've noticed that I've started to put off starting writing or anything else I need to focus on for more than five minutes until everyone has gone to bed which doesn't bode well if I need to contact other humans who exist in the daylight hours. Also, it's really playing hell with my sleep schedule; going to bed at 4am and waking up at noon isn't really a sustainable lifestyle choice.
Part of this is just that there's nowhere in the house I can be that people or animals won't occasionally walk through except my bedroom and thanks to lifelong sleep issues I've been trying to keep that a sleeping-only area. I'm doing my best to work around the issue now, but I'm trying to figure out the best way to introduce (and enforce) 'working hours' for myself but I already know at least one member of my family has a compulsive need to talk at people for a certain amount of time per day. Whether or not they want to listen is not taken into consideration.
The good news is that several chapters of my book are at or near completion and ready for editing. The bad news is that other chapters are barely outlined, but those are the chapters that I've had trouble getting sources for so I just need to try harder or pester more people. And I need to get better about writing down what I want to do, so a sudden interruption doesn't disrupt my whole train of thought or schedule because I completely forget what I had meant to do. Also, maybe train the dogs to fetch me snacks.
2 comments:
Um, can't you just write at Starbucks like the rest of us?
They tend to make you buy stuff at Starbucks if you intend to plant yourself there all afternoon and I have discovered that since I don't have a publishing deal writing a book actually doesn't pay anything. Once I start selling books that will become an option. I might try the local library though.
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