Freud had it right, love and work, work and love are the keys to meaning in life.
First of all, thank you all for sharing your own love stories in response to my Valentine post, I am grateful to have them.
As we approach March, I am struggling to get back to work! This coming Monday, my short story workshop RE-VISION: SHAPING SHORT STORIES begins through The Quebec Writers Federation. Check qwf.org and workshops for details. There may still be a place left for you! I'm looking forward to this class, as I love teaching, when it comes to teaching my passion: fiction. The group in this workshop is intimate (under 12) and we really get the chance to know one another through our writing.
I am also writing and imagining into my new novel tentatively titled All But Forgotten, a literary mystery of sorts, character-driven, like all of my work. But you know, I am finding modern technology distracting. I can manage to NOT answer the phone (sorry, but true), unless I hear that it is something important involving my children or husband, and I can easily avoid turning on TV or radio, but it's the bloody internet that is my problem. Going on email, FACEBOOK, checking my favorite sites throughout the day, looking in on news...hey, it beats the blank screen!
Back in the day, when we all wrote longhand or on our typewriters, this wasn't the problem. The only distraction was gazing out the window or deciding suddenly to clean the house in a whirl-wind or do a load of laundry.
So, any friendly advice most welcome.
As I must bear down, get tough with myself, and get stuck into this book which beckons.
And now back to work...oh, maybe I should just check in on email....
Help!
-Ami
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2 comments:
Hello Ami,
Wow, can I ever relate to this week posting! Last summer, I changed from a PC to a Mac and decided to take some course to learn how to use its full potential. I learned how to publish photo albums, make movies, create web sites and templates - such fun! I could spend days, evenings in front of my computer, creating great projects... but doing little client work. I am now more disciplined. I start my days with my client work and if there is any time left, then I play on my computer: a better balance.
If you want an antidote to frivolous time spent on a computer, just read a couple of post-apocalyptic novels and you realize just how useless that electronic world really is.
Imagine for a moment that the electricity goes out - no lights, no heat, no computers, no Internet. Now, what skill do you have to survive in that world? Typing is completely useless. Look at your hands. Those are your tools. What can you grow, build, make, create with those?
Feel better now? Seriously though, the only way I know to not get caught up in the distracting electronic world is to ignore it. With time, you learn to not care so much about checking emails/Facebook/the news, etc. every five minutes. Every hour will do and only for a few minutes for so, then, it's back to the essay/poem/short story/novel. Focus, focus, focus! Discipline is the only way! Either that, or I will fix up a device in your office chair that will shock you every time you deviate from what you're supposed to do. Pavlov may have had the right idea . . .
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