Yesterday I didn’t include the prompt verbatim, I will for the remaining entries.

December 2 Writing.
What do you do each day that doesn’t contribute to your writing — and can you eliminate it?
(Prompt Author: Leo Babauta)

I read the prompt around 2:00 today but let my mind just work on my reply throughout the afternoon, while I checked e-mails and read Gawker, while I cooked tonight’s Chicken Pot Pie, when I was helping to decorate the Christmas tree, and when I was reading my friend Sarah’s entry for today.   My point is, all day while I was focusing on those things, I was pondering the prompt and my response, and that’s how it is with writing.  During last month’s Novel writing program I would occasionally pose questions to myself about my characters, or I would do something with friends and I would wonder how to fictionalize the experience and incorporate it into the story. 

Are there things I could cut back on to allow me to focus better on actually writing things down, yes of course.  I would immediately point out that I enjoy playing Facebook games and seeing what new games people are into, I like computer and console video games as well.  I read my twitter twice a day, which is a lot like sitting and reading the newspaper because of all the linked articles and videos.  However, the gaming is a part of who I am, I’m inquisitive and exploring video games helps to satisfy my curiosity, and the interactions I have with people on Facebook and Twitter help me feel connected and contributing to the world, even if it’s in the smallest way.

The critic in my mind immediately suggests that I could contribute so much more if I focused my efforts into one field or one project and carried it through to completion, and I agree, but that’s not how social human beings operate.  We rely on one another, and have expectations, sometimes without even voicing them.  There are things that would distract me no matter how strictly I tried to force writing, and in my experience that kind of writing might produce a lot of ideas but not a lot of continuity or unity in the product.  For example, see this entry rushed to complete by midnight.

I read today about a new computer called CLARION that solves problems the way people do, not the way computers do.  What was most interesting to me in the article was that when they interrupted or distracted the computer, it’s results were more often like the outcomes of the human mind.  Having to multitask and handle everything at once is part of our human experience and I think keeping the writing process true to that experience is one of the stepping stones to good writing, instead of just volume.

Now, putting my own stubbornness aside, there are authors from previous time periods who didn’t have all the information age to distract them and they came up with thousands of stories and characters just fine, and made it a habit to write daily.  All I can say to that point is, I wrote most days each week in November, and in #Reverb10 I will write each day, so it’s a habit I’m working on, slowly.

Also, I struggle to be more succinct. Bear with me.