Distractions

Distractions... part of the process.

I suppose that I'd never really stopped to think about it, but distractions and how we deal with them are as much a part of the process as anything else.

First, a couple of things about me. I have Attention Deficit Disorder. Full-blown, diagnosed at the University of Michigan Medical Center, used to take Ritalin for control, the whole shebang. Great. So I deal with it. I took the medication for something close to six years, and I was the picture of pay-attentionedness (I know...I made it up). I was a dutiful little pharmacy tech, filling medication carts in two different hospitals with an efficiency rate over 99 percent. I also quit writing, stopped being a musician, and basically gave up my creative side in order to make a living. Then I moved to Virginia and decided that, regardless of the fact that I might lose that medication-induced power of control, my creativity was too important to me to continue to squash. So I stopped. I haven't had a dose of Ritalin for over six years now, and I've written two books and several short stories. I've also become a musician again, so it's all good.

Well, it has often been said that you must take the bad with the good. So here's the bad.

Distractions. They stop me like the proverbial freight train. I can't write with a TV or radio turned on. I can't write if there is anyone else in the room. There are two words that once made me the happiest kid on the planet, but now only fill me with dread and anxiety. Snow day. A house full of the teenaged members of my family, sometimes their friends, always accompanied by the sound of the television, phone conversations, iPods and the inevitable, "Turn that down, before you rupture an eardrum." Even if they're quiet, they're here and I can sense their presence. I love them all dearly, but they create a situation in which I cannot write.

Why am I telling you this? Because that's part of my writing process as well. I try to find ways to compensate. I managed to bang out 300 words yesterday. Managed? I should have said struggled. I tried working with my own iPod stuffed in my ears, but as ridiculous as it sounds, I found myself singing along with the Latin text of the Mozart Requiem. And then, I turned off the music and went as far as to put on a pair of earmuffs. Not your usual fluffy, keep-your-ears-warm earmuffs, but the hard black plastic earmuffs that I wear with my brother when we go to the pistol range to shoot guns. Did it help? Sort of. Did I feel like the biggest dork on the face of the Earth? Definitely. Is it a solution? No, it's not.

So here's where I am now. Since my last post, I've written very little. It's nice to be home, but there really is little progress on the book. I've talked about it a lot. I've worked out some story details. I know where I want it to go, but until I get a little peace, or until I get an office with a door that I can close, I'm pretty much stuck. Chris made a really interesting observation last week, in the midst of my trouble, that I was basically a solitary person. Unfortunately, I'm a solitary person who hates to be alone, so I take the good with the bad, the peace with the distractions, and do what I can.