I am learning how to concentrate while being distracted.
-D.A. Reed, Author
In the Beginning…
This was something I never thought I’d say, much less be able to do. Yet I found myself revealing this bit of truth to a good friend of mine as we texted back and forth during this pandemic madness.
When I first began writing novels, I needed to set aside at least three hours to write (I know, right? Who has that kind of time??). I needed to go back and reread what I had written the day before, immerse myself in the characters and story – and then I needed to actually write. Because, let’s face it, while there are times the words flow forth furiously, other times there is a lot of staring at the wall trying to create sentence structure, or simply wondering what the heck is going to happen next.
Then I became a mother, and three-hour writing sessions went out the window.
I struggled. God bless my husband who would take the kids and tell me to go write in a coffee shop somewhere (even if I did get several texts after the first hour saying, “ETA???”).
Then I began writing short psychological horror stories for fun (don’t judge me please…). And writing something much shorter than a novel that didn’t require me to remember so many moving parts of a storyline released that mental block where I needed several hours to write. I found myself able to simply write a page or two (or sometimes one lone paragraph) before shooting out of my chair to stop my children from hitting each other over the head with blocks or from pulling all the books off the bookshelves.
Then Came a Pandemic
All this time to sit around at home and…write. Right? (Picture me rolling my eyes…) Right. Loads of time to write – as my husband suddenly wants to purge the entire house and keeps coming up with projects for us both to do because he’s climbing the walls. As my children fight constantly because they are always, well…together. As I homeschool our children while also continuing to work two part-time jobs at home. As I…well, you get the idea.
So when my friend commented (with some amazement) that I had been able to write anything during this time of chaos we currently live in, I simply said, “I am learning how to concentrate while being distracted.” Then I realized how very true that is.
Don’t get me wrong. There are many times when I have shoved my journal aside and said, “Yeah, that’s not happening right now,” but there have been many times where I have been able to pound out a few pages while my kids wrestle and scream around me, or stop writing in the middle of a sentence to explain what a parallelogram is, then go right back to finishing the sentence. And yes, there have been a couple instances where I have screamed out, “I will answer one more question and then y’all better leave me alone for the next twenty minutes!” (And that y’all included my husband…)
I am adapting. Sometimes painfully, but I am adapting. I hope and pray you are able to as well. Whatever you do, keep fighting for that time and ability to put words on the page. It is – and always will be – worth it.
