Quiet writing

[primsong]

I seem to be severely handicapped, as I have a terrible time writing anything other than very light verse if I am being interrupted (Mom, when's dinner? Mom, I can't find my socks!), or even if I have others moving around me, playing music, talking. Or even if they are silent and polite, but looking over my shoulder at what I'm (trying to) write.

Arrrgh!

So little of my time is uninterrupted and quiet and alone that I finally resigned myself to getting up an extra hour early in the mornings just so I can try to write a little before I have to wake up the kids for school. Then I'm too sleepy and end up frittering it away on simple word games or email. Help....

How do you write? How do you lose yourself in your work when there are other things going on around you? My tales and verses are driving me crazy because they are so often having a slow death, unwritten, pressed into the dust of mundania.

Comments

[samarra.livejournal.com]

The only way for me to lose myself in writing is to be alone, to be thinking about the subject for days before I actually sit down and write about it, and to play music that takes me to the places I want to write about as I'm actually writing.

The music really really helps, try it!

((((((((((((Prim)))))))))))))))

[lothithil.livejournal.com]

I suppose I am blessed by the fact that I live alone, so human interruptions are minimal, usually. When I sit down to write stories, I usually do it when I have half an idea already of what I want to write. I day-dream or out-loud dialogue the story to myself when I'm working or walking (yes, people are pretty sure I am insane). When I am actually writing, I have on the tv (a DVD I've seen before, so I don't pay as much attention) or music.

My biggest obsticles are my cats. When I sit down to write, it's like I've smeared catmint and canned salmon all over myself and they just can't stop purrin' and sittin' on me and trying to climb inside the pc monitor... little fiends!

Occasionally I'll be writing and the phone or the door will ring, and if it does, my brain totally derails, unless I've outlined my work (which doesn't happen often). I feel like that fellow who wrote Kublakahn... *just don't answer the door!!!* LOL!

In Zhanadu did Kublakahn a stately pleasure-dome decree...

[kimbys-place.livejournal.com]

*sigh* I no longer have the desire to write. The fount has been dried up forever, I fear. When it mattered to me, I wrote every spare minute I had. Now I just don't care.

[accioboytoy.livejournal.com]

Welcome to my world, Prim.

I'm a bad choice for telling anyone how to write lately, as I haven't been writing anything but my name and creative resumes. I have two stories laying unfinished, and God knows if they ever will be. I'd like to think so, but I'm not holding out a lot of hope for it.

[accioboytoy.livejournal.com]

And you're so good at it, too!

Our muses took off with the Orange County Choppers and left us in the dust, woman. Fickle creeps!

[kimbys-place.livejournal.com]

Maybe we could write about the Orange County Choppers instead? MEAN BIKER BABES TEAR UP COAST. DETAILS AT 11.

[kimbys-place.livejournal.com]

I shouldn't have said, "I don't care", that was a bit obnoxious; what I should have said was "I lost my first love." :-/ However, thanks to your Scrapbook, I can still visit past glories and wish the fire would return.

[my-cocoon.livejournal.com]

ok get outta my head Prim...ditto ditto ditto

I write when the Muse hits me hard morn noon or night. Some stories(the current list of titles is on my page) start, studder, re-write, finish, re-write, investigate details timelines back stories, re-write, then possibly post for review before finishing or re-writing again.
Except the poems...they flow, have their own life and I dont think about them they just ARE, to be found and written down.

I feel your pain.

Early evenings after dinner are best for me or when it is quiet on a weekend.

I wish I had a haven to go to to write and muse and not worry over life and other things....Walden Pond is calling my name ;-{>

[primsong.livejournal.com]

I always wished I could be like Robison Jeffers, and go dwell in an old tower by the sea to write poetry with nothing more than the wind and waves for companions...

Or even like Dr. Seuss in his old observatory-turned-studio.

[primsong.livejournal.com]

((((Kimby)))))

Perhaps one day it will - to everything there is a season, and your muse has gone to ground like the lilies and daffodils... someday you will see those little green leaves peeking up above the ground again, and know there will be flowers.

[primsong.livejournal.com]

They will be - it may be long that they lay there, like a partly-knitted afghan awaiting your hands once again, but yes, they will be...maybe not in their original form.... One interesting thing that happens to some 'abandoned tales' is that they sprout, like potatoes left in the pantry for too long and one day you look at it and go "oh my! This doesn't even remotely resemble what I started on, but see what it has become...!"

One day your Brynn will be older, off with his friends or at a summer job. One day you will have that time to dwell in your heart-land again.

[my-cocoon.livejournal.com]

indeed!
As I was driving back and forth between Eugene this weekend, twice, I was dreaming of a small pastoral life on a farm. Just for writing and playing my flute. I need to win a Lotto for such a dream or as we all dreamed so long ago at the PP, gather all our friends into a Shire Community, but your take on that was that we'd just kill each other any way... ya never know.
Some ideal setting like that movie "The Village" perhaps.

I hope for you Prim, because it is always a pleasure reading your works.

[primsong.livejournal.com]

Where Alph the sacred river ran,
In caverns measureless to Man,
Down to the sunless sea...

I wish I could remember more of that that the first stanza - add to list of "things I wish I would get around to: Memorize more of that."

I love my family, but there certainly are plenty of times I've wondered if I would have been better off living as a hermit, I just can't seem to soak up enough silence and peace.

LOL, the cats! Cats knoooow what you are thinking..... *doo dee doo doo*

[primsong.livejournal.com]

*waits for at least a limerick about the Orange Country Choppers*

:-D

Pesky children

[fakoriginal.livejournal.com]

I knew children were a disability :)

[lizmybit.livejournal.com]

I have to be honset and say that I can't be much help here. I am ADD girl and always have a difficult time concentrating when there are distractions. I would tell you that getting up earlier is proably a good idea, but not so much if you're too tired. Maybe you could take and hour each days and tell the kids to go read or something. You could have "quiet" everyday. This way maybe you caould get things accomplished that you desire to do. Not sure it will work, this is the non-mother talking here! (((hugs)))

[lizmybit.livejournal.com]

I feel your pain! I used to love to write. I just don't have the time. I barely have time to shower! I do miss it, but I've not been doing it for so long, I'm not sure I'd know where to start! (((Hugs)))

[estellye.livejournal.com]

I knew a woman who sat on the floor of her closet with her laptop for an hour every day and her kids knew that if Mom was in the closet anything short of bleeding from an artery wasn't going to be a good enough excuse to inturrupt her.

As for me I am childless and, for the moment single, and even catless (*sob*) but work stress has been more than enough to make my muse seek greener pastures. I wonder what the world would be like if all the talented writers had the peace they needed to create?

[primsong.livejournal.com]

The world would be a more beautiful place! This is one of the things I am looking forward to in heaven - freedom from the daily grind that is associated with dirt, food and decay so we can all indulge that spark of creativity that the Creator placed within us... one of the nicest parts of being in His image.

Let's all spend the first couple hundred years just writing, shall we? :-)


(hmm....*Looks at stuffed closet without even enough room for the clothes, much less me...* I envy her her closet!)

[primsong.livejournal.com]

"tell the kids to go read or something..." *snicker snicker*

(((((((Liz)))))))

[lizmybit.livejournal.com]

I told you I wasn't much help. Have a lovely Thanksgiving!

[accioboytoy.livejournal.com]

I hope so.

What is hard for me is that I dwelt long ( for me) in Tolkien's world, and am finding it hard to re-enter it. I know what I set out to do, I know what I mean to have happen, but finding Grima's "voice" again has been hard. And I think I'd rather have him hang than not do him justice; does that make sense?

*snickers at the potato-sprout analogy*