I'm the sort of person who writes best when I don't have other things to do hanging over my head. I'm not particularly concerned about things like laundry (which I'm happily ignoring as I write this) but intellectual things like updating my budget, sending emails, and filing story ideas. It occurred to me that although I've been writing every day for the last two weeks, I haven't been getting much done--just a few hundred words each day, which will mean the novel will take forever. And I've been doing the bulk of this writing not during naptime, but after both my son and husband go to bed at night, and I've been depriving myself of sleep in the process. I also realized that my office had gotten quite cluttered and my "I'll take care of that later" list had gotten very long. I therefore made a concentrated effort to tidy up--both in my head and out--in the hopes that it will make my writing flow more easily again.
I'd hoped to spend one naptime doing this, but it turned into three. I took care of bank statements, filed papers that had been sitting around, cut out a few recipes that I've been wanting to try and filed them away, signed up for an online service I'd been meaning to do, sent a half-dozen emails that had been on the backburner, transcribed some papers so I could get them off my desk, and ordered some stuff for my son's birthday party.
I definitely feel more relaxed. It's nice to look around my work space and see everything organized. Will it help my writing? Well, naptime today was spent entertaining since we had people over, so here we are in the evening again. I'm hoping to get back on track during naptime tomorrow. Time will tell!
2 comments:
And yet, I find it easier to write in clutter. Perhaps that's why I'm an irresponsible bohemian.
I do deliberately deprive myself of sleep though. I can't have clocks with second hands in the house because I get freaked out by the slowly diminishing amount of time I have left on this Earth.
I should really stop reading biographies of famous people who died young.
I think I write better when I am under some sort of pressure-lack of time, lack of sleep, tons of other stuff to do. When everything else is squared away, I seem to get distracted too easily, as if my mind is hunting for more things to fill it. I wish I would do better with nothing else on my plate, but alas, I think that is just how I am built.
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