If you did a survey of poets and writers and asked them for their chief complaint about their own writing journey I think an astounding amount of them would name FOCUS.
I have always held a romantically wild fascination with the Algonquin Roundtable. Just imagine—a lunch meeting everyday for ten years with Dorothy Parker, Harold Ross, Robert Benchley, et al. Each morning would hold a brisk walk in Central Park followed by several hours of intense writing, a fantastically sarcastic and playful lunch with the best creative minds of a generation and then back to more writing for the afternoon. Cocktails to follow. No internet, email, Twitter or Facebook to interrupt the pure artistic focus of the day.
And yes. I do LOVE this fantasy while also understanding that most of them probably spent their mornings drinking a bloody mary and recovering from the previous night's drink fest, the afternoon playing with friends and then a missed afternoon to write because it was a three martini kind of meal.
The best part of the fantasy, though, is the ideal of focus. These artists, writers, and editors didn't need to seal themselves in an isolation chamber because in many ways, isolation was much easier to come by. Simply don't have a phone in your flat. Letters can be read whenever you feel like it. There's no need to answer the door if you're busy.
In my reality, FOCUS is the greatest battle of all. I am a fast writer and if I could really buckle down everyday of the week, I could write, like maybe, ten thousand books a year. Really Totally.
And yet there are a million little pins poking me in the side all day. There's the phone, which I feel obligated to answer with three kids across town at musical theatre camp, email to read which might contain that amazing, illusive something I've been waiting for, Twitter to follow because someone might say something so witty that I need to retweet it at once, Facebook just for a minute because I like to see what my kids friend's are up to, the NEWS because I am a total news junkie, and then I also need to approve the comments on my blog, and there'swriteoncon going on right now, and because . . .
Well, and there's the food. I bake bread. I can. I make soups, jams, I pickle things, I collect eggs, I make things with eggs.
And then there's always the house. And the farm. And the 35 animals. And the hair from the 35 animals that needs to be swept up.
What's a girl to do?
FOCUS.
So my solution is thus: all writing for the day MUST be completed before email and internet are open. If the internet is necessary for thesaurus.com and wikipedia, then so be it. But I am strict with myself. No news. No Twitter.
Writing is the meal that offers me true sustenance, feeds my mind and soul, fills me up.
The internet is dessert—it comes after everything else when I'm probably too full and only have room left for a small bite.
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