Welcome to Writer Rants–where every Friday a writer just lets loose on whatever the heck is bugging her this week. Enjoy.
As writers, we all know there is a big difference between writing a piece and typing it up. Writing takes time, requires research, and involves a lot of planning to work in keywords, cover the topic in a limited space, and keep the piece within its scope. When we’re working at home, though, our family and friends can’t figure out why we get cranky and complain that we can’t write when we’re not typing away at our computer. Let’s talk about this a little.
Talking, Talking, Talking
My daughter, bless her 9-year-old heart, is a social butterfly whose mouth is in constant motion. I was working on a new content writing gig recently and had told her several times that I was working and, if she wanted to go out to dinner later, she’d have to let me work. So when she came back through chatting to the latest stuffed dragon in her collection, the clever phrasing I’d been trying to work out in an article introduction went completely out of my brain. “But mama,” she huffed a few minutes later, “You weren’t writing. You were just sitting there.” Aaaaarrrrggghhh!!!
Annoying Little Quirks
We’ve all been there. There’s a half hour on the clock and you’ve got a really tough blog post that requires research, sources, hyperlinks and formatting. You’ve finally figured out how you’re going to approach it, where the keywords will fit in and which awesome new research you’re going to reference. Then the cat zooms by, the dog starts going off, the kid next door starts practicing his clarinet — badly — and the jackhammer across the street starts up again. Though you know they’re not, they all seem like planned assaults on your sanity.
The worst, for me anyway, is when all those disturbances line up at once. It’s uncanny, like the universe spotted your focus and hit the “disrupt” button just for laughs. Try explaining to somebody who hasn’t juggled deadlines that researching the economic history of socks for a 2025 blog client can’t really be interrupted for a sudden chat about dinner plans or a quick “do you remember where the batteries are?” I’ve started using sticky notes everywhere, not as reminders, but as shields, just to signal—please, let me pretend I’m alone in the world for just another hour.
Speaking of signals, headphones are both a help and an invitation for chaos. At least in my house, putting them on doesn’t signal “do not disturb,” but more like “come talk to me right now, I probably can’t hear you and you can shout your updates about the missing socks directly into my ear.” Honestly, some days the sheer volume of interruptions makes me wonder if I should rent a closet somewhere, stick a “Genius at work (please knock ironically)” sign on it, and just work from there. Or maybe I’d just get lonely and start talking to the furniture myself.
Family Theater: Can We Please Skip the Drama?
My personal kryptonite are my husband’s deep sighs, all of which precede his next diatribe on what’s wrong in our government, the lateness of a response he’s expecting, or our computer’s open rebellion against his authority. Though I’m reluctant to ask what’s wrong, after 11 years, I know that, if I don’t ask and help solve the problem, it’s just going to keep ratcheting up and, when he goes off, I really won’t get any work done.
If there’s anything I’ve learned in my first year of writing full-time, it’s that a good pair of noise-cancelling headphones or an office you can at least close the door to are priceless and absolutely necessary to productivity as a writer. Maybe I can afford a pair after I get this post done. It’s just a few more days and . . . . what’s that, dear? Your dragon is stuck in a tree. I’m writing right now, you know. Just sitting here typing? <insert a sigh of defeat> Okay, let’s go get it.
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