"After all, to desire something requires projecting yourself into the future—how do you know you’ll still want it when you get there? And along the way there are so many attractions, way stations, spots of time.... Now that I no longer work a forty-hour-a-week job, I tell many people I am writing a book. It is going along, I say, but slowly. How is it that so many chores, parties, trips, assignments, and plainly wasted hours intervene? Not everyone is distracted from their most cherished goals. But I think everyone is distracted from something—it is desire’s shadow, trailing behind our self-presentations. By beginning anything, we create the possibility of detours.... Research easily becomes its own distraction. Fiction writers are not unfamiliar with this crisis, having placed their character under a tree, then specifying what kind of tree it is, then wondering if that tree would be in flower at this particular time of year, whether it grows in the particular geographical region where the story takes place. We can become masters of rationalizing the inessential.... A common idea of distraction presupposes that you’re turning away from something more important that you ought to be paying attention to instead...."
That essay is also about Flaubert. I wasn't going to mention that, but there's a section about one of my all-time favorite books, a Flaubert book, "The Dictionary of Received Ideas."
The brilliance of the entries, which are alphabetically arranged, is in their teetering on the brink of being taken seriously:
ILLUSIONS: Claim to have many. Lament having lost them.
IMAGES: Poetry always contains too many of them.
IMAGINATION: Always vivid. Guard against it. When one has none, denigrate it in others. To write novels, all you need is a little imagination.
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Fiction writers are not unfamiliar with this crisis
Wordy and useless cliche, perhaps lazy or paid by the word.
Fiction writers have this crisis.
Distracted by his navel, possibly.
I am Laslo.
I'm starting to think America never wants to solve any of it's problems, but just wants to distract us from them, eternally.
"Now that I no longer work a forty-hour-a-week job, I tell many people I am writing a book. It is going along, I say, but slowly. How is it that so many chores, parties, trips, assignments, and plainly wasted hours intervene?"
Aside from the 40 hour week (I always worked more than that) the above sentence could be my own. This was a particularly fun (and well written) essay for me to read. And, after reading of Flaubert's own issues with getting on with the process, I feel I'm in good company. Like I've been given a pass.
I should be writing right now, and would be, if not for lying awake much of the night thinking about how my story needed to go, so that I'm too tired to feel creative at this moment. Then there's the dog to tend to, the Althouse Blog to read through (and possibly comment on), the electrician coming in an hour, the lunch date with friends, etc., etc. I can already feel this day slipping away.
Maybe tomorrow. I can get back to writing tomorrow...
Distraction: an endless succession of beans and nuts, perhaps.
I am Laslo.
I was thinking of getting that book. Or was it an essay? When I was distracted by Laslo's comment which reminded me that I keep meaning to pass on this fun fact from the world of the unborn: your belly-button is the oldest part of your body. In fact, you had it before you had a belly. When you were 5 days old, you were a little round sphere with a tiny apparatus at one point on the sphere which enabled you to attach yourself to the cells at a point in your mothers womb and begin to draw nourishment through them. Most of the sphere would go on to be the amniotic sac but in a small hollow place inside the sphere just behind the tiny apparatus for attaching yourself and drawing nourishment there were eight cells crushed up against the apparatus and attached to it. These were the ancestral cells to all your body cells. They increased in number and drew back from the wall but spun out a cord maintaining the connection to the apparatus and through it to the nourishing womb. This umbilical cord persisted through all changes of body shape in the womb and has a remnant scar left on your body, your belly-button or navel. So this has been navel gazing which is deep contemplation, not distraction. Om
I was thinking of getting that book. Or was it an essay? When I was distracted by Laslo's comment which reminded me that I keep meaning to pass on this fun fact from the world of the unborn: your belly-button is the oldest part of your body. In fact, you had it before you had a belly. When you were 5 days old, you were a little round sphere with a tiny apparatus at one point on the sphere which enabled you to attach yourself to the cells at a point in your mothers womb and begin to draw nourishment through them. Most of the sphere would go on to be the amniotic sac but in a small hollow place inside the sphere just behind the tiny apparatus for attaching yourself and drawing nourishment there were eight cells crushed up against the apparatus and attached to it. These were the ancestral cells to all your body cells. They increased in number and drew back from the wall but spun out a cord maintaining the connection to the apparatus and through it to the nourishing womb. This umbilical cord persisted through all changes of body shape in the womb and has a remnant scar left on your body, your belly-button or navel. So this has been navel gazing which is deep contemplation, not distraction. Om
There is a fantastic French book called 'The Philosophy of Walking'. It’s basic premise is that many philosophers took long walks as the act of walking occupied the body and freed the mind.
Try going for a long walk without and ear/head phones. You will be surprised by where your mind goes. Each step taken is on the way to an eventual outcome.
"Try going for a long walk without and ear/head phones. You will be surprised by where your mind goes. Each step taken is on the way to an eventual outcome."
When I was young I frequently listened to music. I don't much anymore because I find it interferes with my own thoughts, which are more interesting.
Isn't the best part of being a successful fiction writer (besides the cash and babes) taking extravagant vacations and claiming it on your taxes as research?
My go to distraction used to be the endless attempt to reduce the steps i need to take to finish a job. If I don't start, I'll never finish.
How do I start the drawing? Make it a 3D, that way you'll automatically have any and every view the engineers may want. 3D is overkill. It's a simple job, it's budgeted for so many hours. Yea. But if they change it (and you know they will) if it's 3D you only have to change the model and all the 2D views will automatically update.
Starting is the hardest part, only when you have to finish.
The level of distraction allowed depends on the situation. If I am walking a path in the forest, I must minimize distractions and focus on my feet. But if I am sitting on my couch watching a movie, I can play on my laptop at the same time.
I listen to music while driving, but never while walking. No talk either--even when my wife and I walk together. She is hard of hearing and usually is listening to an audiobook through her hearing aid/Bluetooth whatzit anyway.
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