Hellooooo Arrowheads! It’s nice to have you back on this Wednesday afternoon! Today, we’re delving into a deep subject: Writing Distractions, and how to combat them.

Oh man, this is going to be a toughie.

Pinterest

 As much as I adore this social media site for all of its wonders, it serves as my main distraction from writing. I find this ironic, as I’ve made quite a few writing boards on Pinterest to inspire me to write! Nevertheless, the best thing to do to avoid the temptation of scrolling through Pinterest for hours upon hours is to exit out of your Internet browser or temporarily turn off your computer’s access to the Internet. Trust me, this works wonders!

Marketing 

Book marketing has become my most prominent distraction from writing over the past month, as I’ve been doing everything possible to spread the word about Can’t Beat the Heart of a Carolina Girl. From attempting to establish a presence on Goodreads, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon and WordPress, I’ve had my hands full. Though I’m still attempting to combat this distraction, I’m learning that writing and scheduling posts in advance is a huge time saver, and allows me to have time to do other things, like writing.

Reading Old Writing

 This one can either be beneficial or detrimental depending on how I’m feeling that day. Sometimes, reading previous chapters of my WIPs can inspire me to write, whereas other times it makes me over think the situation and believe that I’ll never come up with a good ending for the novel(s). I’m still weaning myself from this practice, but it’s been difficult. The best advice I’ve heard is  to just start writing from where you left off and pray for the best.

Editing Old Writing

Okay, so over the past few months I had also been editing Can’t Beat the Heart of a Carolina Girl, and so the editing mindset has been prevalent since then. I’ve found myself scrolling back through previous chapters and tweaking them, while accomplishing little to no writing. The cure? Force yourself to stop editing! Leave it all until you have reached the “The end” portion of your manuscript. Trust me, it’ll save you some stress!

Reading Other Novels

 The final and most often cited writing distraction for most people is reading other novels. First, reading other novels takes away time from writing. This, however, is excusable, as reading other books aids your own writing skills. Second, reading other novels, at least in my case, makes you compare yourself to other writers and leaves you wondering if you have what it takes to be a bestselling author. My advice for this is to keep reading, but do the best you can to turn off the nagging voice inside of you saying that their writing is better than yours. Everyone has a unique writing voice, and yes, some writing does suck. But, if you’re doing your absolute best to be creative and deliver a grammatically correct and entertaining work, that’s an amazing accomplishment that you should be proud of!

 

Thanks for reading, Arrowheads! Check back here on Friday for another Flash Fiction post!

-Allyson 😀