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Tuesday, November 25, 2014

Many writers like to read. Sometimes good and sometimes bad.

I have found that one of my main downfalls as a writer is the fact that I love to read.  Before the deterioration of my eyes made it difficult to focus on my favorite pastime, reading books, I used to consume at least one novel a week.  I loved to lay in bed and read a book before falling asleep.

Now my reading consists of editing my own writing, and reading the news online.  This second one has become quite a distraction for me because I now have the TIME to actually read about what is going on in the world.  Before I retired a few years ago, I never seemed to have the time to read the news, let alone comment on it.  In fact, I tried to ignore the news as much as possible back then.  News was almost never nice, and I wanted to remain as happy as possible in my own safe little world.

The point is, when a writer hits a lull in their daily business of storytelling, it is far to easy to get distracted on the internet.  With MSN as my homepage, it is too easy to read all the news and keep up on the stories of the day (even commenting once in a while) while letting my creativity sit on the back burner.

There are some internet sites that are not a complete waste of time however.  My twitter account allows me to keep my followers up to date on how my books and writing are progressing.  Also I am constantly trying to increase the number of followers for potential futures book sales.  My blog is a great venue to promote my writing, and when I get the motivation, to even try to write some knowledgeable gems for other writers.  My Facebook site is also a good place to keep in touch with other writers and to promote my books.

So, in essence, even though I may not be actually writing my books every day, I am still marketing the works that I have already completed.  Not a complete waste of time I guess.  Anyway, if anyone has some good advice about maintaining and improving my motivation to stay focused on my book writing, I would appreciate it.

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