Writing FAST - Jeff Bollow 2012
Life’s little distractions
The FAST system in the real world
The payoff
Sitting (and keeping) your butt in a chair takes a certain amount of determination. I think we should get our heads together and develop some sort of glue. We could make millions.
Why is it so hard?
Because just as the human eye is drawn to motion, the human mind is drawn to stimulation.
That Idea Factory is cranking. Every idea in your head is sparking a hundred other ideas. The Factory’s churning. It’s looking for something new to process. To filter. To play with.
When it sees the same thing over and over, it gets bored. It wants something else to play with.
The longer the project, the more easily it gets bored.
And it embraces distractions. And that’s a killer.
For example, even on days I knew what to write, even when I was excited about writing, and even when I had to get it written quickly, I would still let ridiculous distractions get in the way.
Today, I wanted to finish this chapter and the next two. But I thought of an example, and did a little research for it on the internet. I saw something funny, and got sidetracked.
I spent three hours looking up “time-wasters” on the web.
I couldn’t believe it! And now it’s nearing midnight, and I’ll only have time to finish this one chapter.
Ridiculous.
As writers, we need to focus. We need to add to the page count every day. But distractions are a part of life. It’s the way your brain works. The secret to handling them is this: Don’t pretend they won’t happen. Just prepare for them.
Allow yourself “distraction time”!
If you don’t give your mind a bit of leeway, it won’t stay focused. So write in short blasts, and surround those blasts with distractions. Or if you know it takes an hour to pound through five pages, give yourself two hours to do it. Pound through, get distracted, pound some more, get distracted... back and forth.
Just as you gave the Movie Critic his time, give distractions their time, too.
Otherwise, they’ll get the better of you every time.