Internal Entertainment

Another thing I’ve been thinking about, about writing:

It’s internally created entertainment.

Now, of course, there can be a difference between the fun kinds of creative writing and the obligatory kinds of drier, business-types of writing. But still, I find that dredging words up out of my subconscious can be remarkably satisfying all on its own.

The tricky part–for me, at least–is how easily my internal entertainment can be over-ridden by external entertainment.

In fact, it’s quite appalling, how easily I’m distracted sometimes.

I can’t do creative, fictional, write-a-story writing with the television on. Or with any kind of vocal music in the room. Or in the next room. My brain too eagerly latches onto words, and if I’m listening to or focusing on someone else’s words (like, say, lyrics), I can’t hear the words whispering in my head.

If I’m thinking about other stories, I can’t generate my own. Lately I’ve been more or less obsessing on Chuck, my favorite television show. It’s “on the bubble,” as they say, and it’s ramping up to its season finale in two weeks, and until I see how they end this season and I find out whether NBC is going to renew it, I’m having a hard time thinking about anything else without having a scene from the latest episode pop into my head, or one of the songs (from its great music selections) drift into my ear. I’m kind of obsessed, because the story they’re telling has gotten even more multi-layered and intriguing, my brain just can’t let it go.

But, see? That’s the thing–I’m letting external sources of information derail my concentration on the internal.

I’ll start working on something–a marketing piece, a blog post, a list of instructions–and then I’ll get mentally distracted, hijacked, by my own brain deciding to think about something else. The book I was reading at breakfast. The song that came up on my MP3 player as I got to the office. The tv show I watched last night.

It almost doesn’t matter–the problem is that it’s a story, or words, that someone else wrote that is keeping me from focusing on my own.

So, what’s a writer to do?

My most drastic solution–and one which I find almost impossible to actually do–is to put a moratorium on all external forms of entertainment. That is, no television, no reading, no movies, no music.

That’s pretty much impossible, of course. (And, no, I am NOT skipping the last three episodes of Chuck, I don’t care how much writing I should be doing.) And, really, having a musical ear-worm playing in my head isn’t necessarily THAT distracting. What I truly find distracts me the most is a good story, so it’s eliminating those that helps the most. I have managed to give up reading fiction for brief periods of time. (And, if you knew the kind of reading habit I have, you would realize how hard that is for me.)

By eliminating the distraction of the story someone else is telling, I find it easier to hear the words in my own head.

Otherwise I spend so much time analyzing plot devices, story twists, unexpected developments, foreshadowing, and all the other hints and games that writers like to play, that I can’t think of my own. I can’t focus on how to get my own characters from plot point A to plot point B if I’m thinking about the way Chuck found his Dad and discovered why he had left his family 10 years ago. I can’t lay out my own step-by-step campaign if I’m mentally charting all the steps that the Chuck writers put down over the last season to get to where they are now.

It’s only by reducing the external clamor for my attention that I can truly focus on the words hiding deep in my head.

This is a fault of my own, of course. I used to have a longer attention span than I do now. That’s something I have to work on. (It’s the “shiny object” syndrome coupled with the fact that so many media these days focus on “short and snappy”. Soundbites. 140-character posts. 30 second ads. We’re not trained to think about any one thing for more than 10 minutes at a time. But that’s another story.)

The point is that my biggest distraction when I’m trying to write is not actually external distractions like my dog barking, or the television. It’s my own brain, sabotaging me by THINKING about those things later on that causes me trouble.

There are times when I truly miss my attention-span.

Anyway–how do YOU eliminate the external distractions when you’re trying to write?

(Oh, and incidentally, if you don’t watch Chuck, you should! Here are my reasons why. And the online buzz has gotten really loud lately. The show airs on NBC on Monday at 8:00–just about the hardest time slot–and is great fun. And, well, I AM trying to get as many people to watch as possible, before they’ve made their official decision as to whether to renew it or not, so … time is of the essence!)