...Not lately.
Here's a list of some of the things that are slowing me down:
1. Work
I have a job at a grocery store, working part-time. This is actually more of a blessing for a writer than a curse. I used to get paid well, but I had to work a lot more than I do now. Work isn't really that big of a deal. I actually enjoy my job, and some days I even have time to think about the stories I write. Still, I would rather have that time devoted to writing.
2. Family
Heaven forbid I mention family, but it's true. Don't get me wrong, I love my girlfriend and daughter, but the responsibilities of being the only person in the household with a car and drivers license can be time consuming. It's a double edged sword; I hope to support my family with book sales at some point in the future (keep dreaming Mr. Hicks? Yes, thank you, I will), but in order to write I have to compromise my time with them. I would rather write than sit in the parking lot of a grocery store with my screaming daughter while my girlfriend goes in to buy groceries, but I would rather watch television and play games with them than study the grammar and sentence structure of my latest work.
3. The Story
At some point during the writing process, some writers sit back and say "Are people really going to care?" After 25,000 words, I have to fight the urge to give up on my story. It's the familiar tale of the grass always being greener on the other side of the fence... It's not! If you cross the fence you're going to find a brand new story that's suddenly fun and interesting, but after you devote 25,000 carefully crafted words into it, guess what happens... The grass isn't as green as it used to be. The idea here is to keep my thoughts fresh. Thoughts can seem stale after a long process of meeting characters and learning about the world they live in, but they would be brand new to each and every person who has never met the characters or lived in that world.
4. Habit
Get up, check the news, let my daughter watch Sesame Street, eat breakfast, wake my girlfriend up, take a shower, go to work, come home, eat dinner in front of the television, keep watching television, go to bed... Wait... wasn't I supposed to write something today? Habits are hard to break. For a while I was in the habit of writing every day. To a certain extent I have still been writing (even for money!) on a daily basis, but the progress of my novel has suffered, even as I build platforms and networks that should help boost sales as an end result... The problem: Will I be able to get back into the habit of making time for my novel??
5. Other Distractions
The news is where I get some of my best ideas. If not ideas, I get to think about how bizarre the world is, and create WHAT-IF scenarios in my mind that can keep me sidetracked for the rest of the day. Around the same time I'm checking the news, I like to see how well I'm doing on Yahoo! Contributor Network. Now, because of all the social networking involved with building my own personal brand of entertainment, I also get to go check Facebook... This isn't as bad as I once thought, especially since I based my profile on writing... Being online is a great time-waster. Offline, I mainly have to worry about the television trap (mind control, somebody should write a book about it).
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