Oh where, oh where, has Janice been? Oh where, oh where could she be?
Not in cyberworld. At least not for the month of August. Yes, I checked out of the internet for a month. No e-mail (now THAT was hard), no facebook, no blogs, no DISTRACTIONS. See, here was my dilemma. June and July had already went by and I wasn't where I wanted to be with my new novel.
My goal: to use my summer months (I'm a teacher, so I pretty much get June, July, and August as a vacation) to write a rough draft of this interesting idea I had. I vowed to myself not to revise one word. Just write a draft. I even used Laurie Halse Anderson's advice: I gave myself permission to write horrible.
I began to notice that life's distractions were really getting in the way of any substantial progress for the draft. I was checking my e-mail every ten minutes to see if my agent wrote me. I was checking facebook. I was reading blogs like crazy (because I love all of your blogs!). None of this is bad, per se, but it is if it detracts from a very important goal.
When school begins, I know (from past experience) that I am super busy. I teach, then I try to squeeze in workouts a couple times a week, then my son has piano lessons, and now he's in football, and you get my drift. Writing takes a back seat. Since I know this, I like to use summer to be as absolutely creative as possible.
So when I realized two months of summer had passed me by, I decided to get serious. That meant saying good-bye to media. I focused entirely on writing my rough draft with every minute of spare time I could devote to it. It was my hopes to complete the entire novel by the time school resumed.
You're probably all on the edge of your seat wondering if I did it....well, I'm pleased to say that August was successful in that I have over 200 pages of the novel drafted. I am not finished, but I have the last chapters outlined. With all that being said, I'm really proud that I cut off all the distractions for the month and focused on my writing.
But I'm not going to lie. I am SOOOOOOO happy to be back on the internet!
Maybe it's time for you to cut some distractions...you don't have to be as drastic as I was. But remember we'll never get published if we don't write the book! :)
Cheers,
Janice
