Help! I’m Distracted from Writing.
Getting distracted from writing has always been a challenge for writers. But it’s more acute these days, as lockdowns and quarantines interfere with the habits we once built. A lot of conventional advice for focusing on our writing projects relies on, well, conventional life—writing in a coffee shop, going to the library, meeting other writers for sprints, setting time aside. But these days, with so much of our daily routines being rerouted to virtual, online activities, it can be hard to settle into Word or Scrivener and get to work without being distracted from writing.
Here are the top four ways we tend to get distracted from writing, with troubleshooting solutions for each.
Sometimes escaping the internet is the only way to focus!
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Why We Get Distracted from Writing and How to Refocus
The internet
These days, as everything from parent-teacher conferences to happy hours has moved online, it can be hard to kick ourselves off the internet. I never intend to go online during my writing time—but then I remember that I haven’t paid the piano teacher or made an appointment yet, and somehow, all my time is sucked away.
But you just have to, or that manuscript will never get written. If you can tell yourself NO INTERNET and listen to it, great. If not, try an internet blocker or app that will prevent you from opening it. If social media is your downfall, run a Facebook or Instagram blocker for your writing hours. Put your phone in a different room while you write. The Pomodoro Technique, where you work for twenty minutes and then take a five-minute break, works well for many authors.
You can also remove the temptation by drafting old school, with a pen and paper. Many writers love AlphaSmarts or other old word processers that do nothing but word process, because they remove that temptation. One person in my writing group drafts on an old laptop without internet access. When all you can do is type words … well, that’s all you can do.
The people around me
This is such a tough one, especially now. So many people are sharing formerly quiet spaces with spouses, roommates, children, and others. We’ve read lots of articles about how to juggle working from home, and lots of that advice can help here—close the door, put a sign up when you can’t be interrupted, arrange childcare, get up early, stay up late.
I truly hope the people in your home respect and support your writing time. If they don’t, that’s a bigger and more important conversation. Mine do—but they’re also always around, and they are loud. I bought my first-ever pair of noise-canceling headphones within a week of school going online last year. Websites that stream the sound of rain and waves help me, too. Other writers listen to fantasy soundtracks or period music to get them in the mood—and to drown out the noise around them.
I’ve even driven to the library parking lot a few times this last year to sit and write in peace and quiet (that helps take away the temptation of the internet, too).
I’ve heard of several groups of writers having good success with virtual sprints or writing time. Sometimes being in a meeting gets more respect than needing quiet writing time! Meeting up in Zoom to all work on your manuscripts and chat for a couple of minutes can be an effective way to carve out writing time—and it’s easier to stay focused when other writers are also working.
My physical surroundings
The laundry. The dishes. The lawn. The messy desk, the unpaid bills, the unfinished craft. These distractions from writing are always going to be around. Yeah, it’s great to get everything taken care of before sitting down to write—but that can turn into never getting around to writing. If it helps, put “write 1000 words” or “edit two chapters” on your to-do list along with everything else. And then close a door so you don’t have to see the mess.
My novel
This is the sneakiest distraction from writing, because it’s masquerading as critical work that must be done! Have you ever stopped to look up one little detail for the scene you’re writing, maybe a description of an Edwardian gown or where the on/off switch would be on a robotic cleaner, and spent an hour or more down a rabbit hole? This has been my downfall so many times! (And yet I don’t always regret it, because it’s so interesting.) Research is one of the easiest ways to get distracted from actually writing. I’ve learned not to allow myself more than a cursory search online while drafting. If I run into a detail I need that I can’t find in a two-second Google search, I write ###WHAT KIND OF DRESS or ###WHERE IS THE SWITCH and press on. Then, while editing, I really enjoy the days where I just use the search function to go from one ### question to the next.
But research might not be your weakness! Perhaps you get new ideas mid-writing and want to revisit your outline extensively. For days. Maybe you can’t picture your heroine, so you troll through casting sites to find the perfect actors for the movie version of your novel. Maybe the villain feels flat, so you take two or three personality tests for her. And then for all the rest of the characters. And then Buzzfeed quizzes. These are all great things to do—until they take over and keep you distracted from actually writing.
And … know that writing is about a lot more than cranking out word count. It’s okay to be human.
(Did I write this while distracted from my own writing? CORRECT.)
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