Writing Anxieties: Focus, Refocus

(Really must not try update wordpress between 10-11pm – seems to slow right down and eat half my posts! So this is finished off from last night.)

There are benefits of a tight deadline you are determined to meet. For one thing, it focuses your energy and thoughts onto finishing it, everything else, the peripheral distractions, dropping away, or otherwise you figure out how to use those distractions as a genuine break from your work rather than as a time-sapping way to avoid doing your work. In the midst of writing this latest one, I was getting into Memrise, and it was a very nifty way of taking time out from the story, being both fun and productive and only taking up a little bit of time.

Trouble is though, that deadlines pass. Once they are gone, then so does my focus. I know there are other projects to do, I know there are other things to write, but after that extreme, tightly focus, almost forced energy, there is also the desire, and dare I say, need to have a break. Well, break-time is well and truly passed. True, I have finished reading one of the dragon books I’ve been meaning to for a while (review to come soon I hope), and yes, I have managed 700 words of a new story, but that one is irritating me as I have the crux of the sex scene, but I’m still figuring out the character dynamics, which are not coming easily. There is time before that’s due and it is only allowed to be short, so that’s something, but still, brain is trying to decide between that and half a dozen other projects I could be getting on with and it’s starting to bug me. Trouble is the simple ‘pick a direction out of a hat’ thought doesn’t really seem to have worked in the past, so that’s going to be a joy in itself finding the next one to really get my teeth into.

It worries me because it relates back to an earlier post I made about finishing things. If you can’t focus on one thing, or even two things, at a time, how can you possibly hope to get stuff done? Yet I know it’s doable, with a deadline breathing down my neck. Perhaps the thing to do is wait until a week before the next deadline?

Yes, you’re right – stupid idea that. Ok, off to work where maybe something will inspire me in the right way.

(On the bright side, I’ve had a big clear out of my Firefox bookmarks. That’s something, right? Right?)

Mirrored from jacquelinebrocker.esquinx.net.

Continuing ‘Water and Dust': contemporary short m/m fiction

Forget what (little) happened before? Read here. If you’re just coming into this, it’s a short m/m piece, each part approximately six sentences long. Aiming to be more romantic and a little sensual rather than overly smutty. 😉

*

Marc started. The usual excuses came to his mind: it’s late; we should sleep early; the lights and the radio are on. He didn’t need to voice them, though, for in his mind he heard Brendan flick each one of them off with a solid, reasonable rejection. This land was theirs. They didn’t have to ask anyone’s permission, or wait on expectation. They’d built the fence to protect their sanctuary. Now they could enjoy it, and live their own rules.

Shaking off the old ways of thinking though was, for Marc, like trying to step out of his own skin. While Brendan walked with an assurance, whistling as his lantern swung, Marc couldn’t rid the tension from his chest.

*

TBC

Photo by PinkMoose, found on flickr and used under the Creative Commons License.

Mirrored from jacquelinebrocker.esquinx.net.