Margaret Atwood said prepare to be interrupted if you’re going to write. How true that is. I feel like I’m interrupted constantly. By my own thoughts. By my addiction to my phone. By the goddamn cats spilling their water and food all over the floor.
Sitting down to write is an exercise in dealing with every distraction that could possibly come up in a thirty-minute window.
But the trick is to come back to the keys, to the page, to the paper. Come back. Sit. And write.
Distractions are an excuse. They happen. And will always happen. You have to expect them, manage them, and keep going.
But it is important to be able to avoid distractions long enough to get into a flow. To find the pace of what it is you want to say. To write until the flood begins and all the words just come pouring out.
So there’s a constant battle. Interruption. Back to work. Interruption. Back to work. Write and ignore. Learn to be one with the chaos internally and externally so that nothing can get in the way of the words hitting the page.
You will always be interrupted. It’s what you do with the time you’re not that matters.
