A Rabbling on Wasted Time and the Writing Life.

I could scream I am so unfocused. Why do I do this to myself? Why is clicking so addicting? It is a serious waste of time. My friend is right, I should break down and order “Freedom” or “Liberty” or “Stay the F Off Line” or whatever the program is called. I thought I had the will-power. I thought I could stay dedicated to the task of writing, but I’ve been on here since 9:30 and have since wrote an email (a long email nonetheless) and created a FB event. Other than that I’ve just been click-happy, checking out what’s going on in cyber world. WTF? Why am I doing that? I don’t really care do I?

This disturbs me.

The other problem is the writing itself. Every day I write somewhere between 1000 and 4000 words but none of it connects. I can’t seem to continue working on something I had worked on the day before. I lose momentum or excitement or desire to continue on that project. I seriously have like 10 to 15 different stories half-finished.

Perhaps it would be better to just accept it. Until I can learn to focus maybe it’s best to just write like this and then a few months from now I can re-read all my work and find the best story to continue on with. Everyone has their own style of creating, why do I have to feel so guilty that I’m doing it my own particular way? I’m not Annie Dillard. I’m not Stephen King. My "writing life" is in a different time. I never wrote on a type writer. I never wrote without the internet (for the most part). We writers have to learn to adjust to this. It’s not my fault I was born into this transitional period.

It is my fault that I can’t complete anything. Well anything of any length. Anything that must be worked on the following day.

AHHHH!

Sometimes a nice scream is all one needs.

Book after book on writing discusses this idea that the writer’s life is like solitary confinement—that may have been true prior to FB but it is not true now. Unless I turn off my connection I can talk to any one of my 473 friends who happen to be online at the time. Not that I do. But I could.

This is all a major mental battle for me. I know I have discussed similar issues in the past but I somehow find this the biggest challenge of them all. Balance. Clicking the red X and really meaning it.

Or believing that the work I’m doing is meaningful enough to work on a second day. That it’s not just ramblings (like this) but that someone somewhere could really take something from it, that with great care and tremendous work ethic my words could mean sometime more. . . and maybe that’s what I’m most afraid of: not doing it well enough so I trick myself into not doing it at all. Or doing it in fragmented pieces that won’t come together until I’m 53 and finally have confidence.

That would be nice. A mere, “this is my voice, like it or not.”

Maybe if I meditate with that mantra . . .