Skip to content
If you’re a writer, you know how hard it can be to actually write sometimes. There’s always a new video to watch, an article to read, a Twitter rant to ignore. It seems like when you’re close to the end of a project, even if that end is only relatively close, those temptations toward distraction become stronger.
And then there’s the other side of it: you fight the distraction, but the words don’t come. You sit in front of your keyboard, clackity-clacking away only to select all and delete because you spent the whole time writing nonsense, or reorganizing your table of contents to to make sure you’ve got the latest version of that chapter title. Or the right number of chapters. Or…
Of course, I don’t know anything about any of these problems.
Nope, never.
So if I were to hypothetically be in such a situation, what would I do? How would I push through the final push?
- Start deleting apps on my phone. My biggest distraction is stuff on my phone that I don’t need. So far, I’ve deleted five time-suck apps. That has been good.
- Shut off Twitter. Good advice in general.
- Close my inbox. There’s no email I need to answer at the times of night I’m usually writing anyway.
- Get out of my house. If my kids are up, I’m not going to be able to write. If Emily needs my help with something, she generally wins. So if a deadline were to hypothetically be breathing down my neck, there’s a lovely coffee shop called The Coffee House at Second and Bridge just waiting for me to be there on Friday morning.
- Write something different. Maybe a bad poem, or an even worse haiku. Whatever it takes to get the creative juices flowing.
- Pray. Because I’m a Christian. Also, I’m desperate.
- Stop writing this blog post. See number five.
See you on the other side, Lord willing.
