This goes out to all of you who struggle with interruptions, large and small. To those of you who do not get interrupted, I hate you.
It's the large interruptions that are the worst. It goes beyond interruption, call it a break or even a hiatus. The common one is that annoying thing called sleep. I'm writing, in the flow (or at least I can see it from here), and the day ends, or I have to go to work (except I'm retired). When I did work, I'd write at lunch, but then I'd have that work interruption again. Around this time of year, it's holidays. Or a cold. What they all have in common is that hours and even days pass between writing sessions.
I don't know about you, but when that happens, it's really tough to recapture what I was feeling. Oh, I know where the plot was going, but getting back to the precise mood and insight feels like trying to get back to where a dream left off. I grasp at phantoms, the echo of emotions.
Lately I've been doing two things. They're obvious things, and you are welcome to snort at their plain attire when I introduce them, but the fellow next to you may find them helpful. First, I read before I go to sleep. Not other people's work, *my* work. The last scene I wrote, however many pages that is. Then I turn out the light and refuse to look at phone or tablet. The last thing my brain gets to see is those words.
The other technique I borrow from Hemingway. Before writing each morning, he would read the previous chapter. I don't go that far, but I'll back up a scene or two. It takes me maybe five minutes, maybe fifteen minutes. It's the closest I can get to finding the re-entry point of my emotional state, my perspective when last I left off. For shorter interruptions, I do the same, but I don't back up as far.
I am doing this after years of not doing it (how's that for obvious?). Each time I returned to the writing, I was parachuting in from a different point, and I think my prose suffered for it. There are places where you can practically hear the gears shifting. Even more, I simply couldn't connect with what was already there, I can to the page with a different emotional timbre, and I would simply start afresh, or even write the same scene differently--trying to play the same song but with a different instrument.
So, there you go. Your mileage and all that, but I do believe it's helping me. Time to return to the dream.
It's the large interruptions that are the worst. It goes beyond interruption, call it a break or even a hiatus. The common one is that annoying thing called sleep. I'm writing, in the flow (or at least I can see it from here), and the day ends, or I have to go to work (except I'm retired). When I did work, I'd write at lunch, but then I'd have that work interruption again. Around this time of year, it's holidays. Or a cold. What they all have in common is that hours and even days pass between writing sessions.
I don't know about you, but when that happens, it's really tough to recapture what I was feeling. Oh, I know where the plot was going, but getting back to the precise mood and insight feels like trying to get back to where a dream left off. I grasp at phantoms, the echo of emotions.
Lately I've been doing two things. They're obvious things, and you are welcome to snort at their plain attire when I introduce them, but the fellow next to you may find them helpful. First, I read before I go to sleep. Not other people's work, *my* work. The last scene I wrote, however many pages that is. Then I turn out the light and refuse to look at phone or tablet. The last thing my brain gets to see is those words.
The other technique I borrow from Hemingway. Before writing each morning, he would read the previous chapter. I don't go that far, but I'll back up a scene or two. It takes me maybe five minutes, maybe fifteen minutes. It's the closest I can get to finding the re-entry point of my emotional state, my perspective when last I left off. For shorter interruptions, I do the same, but I don't back up as far.
I am doing this after years of not doing it (how's that for obvious?). Each time I returned to the writing, I was parachuting in from a different point, and I think my prose suffered for it. There are places where you can practically hear the gears shifting. Even more, I simply couldn't connect with what was already there, I can to the page with a different emotional timbre, and I would simply start afresh, or even write the same scene differently--trying to play the same song but with a different instrument.
So, there you go. Your mileage and all that, but I do believe it's helping me. Time to return to the dream.