I can get hooked on a television series. Boy, let me tell you what. And Netflix is especially the devil because I can find series in their entirety and succumb to the delicious pleasure of binge watching whenever my little heart desires.
Over the past year, I have managed to eradicate tv almost completely from my life. This all came about one day when I was whining about never having any time to write. So I started keeping a log of what I did during the day, looking for places where I could be writing and I wasn't.
It was then that my eyes were open to the biggest distraction of my life. Television. I couldn't believe how many hours of my day/week I was spending sitting in front of the tube, caught up in the visual drama that is so hard to pull away from. And I was invested in so many different series. To the point that my DVR was almost completely full to capacity with unwatched episodes that I was desperately trying to catching up on.
Now TV can be very helpful to a writer, in my opinion - especially the well-written ones. They can illuminate ways to develop character and enhance narrative technique. How to keep plot suspenseful and tension high and pacing tight. But everything in moderation, right?
Moderation didn't seem to apply to me when I started going through my DVR and deleting series recordings. I looked at each one and asked myself, which of these can I absolutely not live without? Which of these am I dying to see each week? I managed to whittle down a list of about 18 shows to a list of five. The ones that made the cut are The Walking Dead, Game of Thrones, Outlander, The Good Wife and The Big Bang Theory. I tried to get it down to four, but The Big Bang Theory is only half an hour so I convinced myself that I could keep it. (Besides, it satisfies my inner geek).
And the Walking Dead, Game of Thrones, and Outlander are all shorter seasons so that's even more free time. This summer I have barely even turned my own television on, unless it was to watch the US Women dominate the World Cup.
I still watch Netflix on my laptop though. Usually while I'm eating dinner. And, as the blog entry indicates, I have recently "discovered" the West Wing. Now I remember the West Wing when it aired - how acclaimed it was, how many awards it won - but I never watched a single episode. It happens to be my besties' all-time favorite show, so I decided to watch the pilot last week, and that was all she wrote.
Because I am hooked. And this show is so well written that it's almost silly. But that whole moderation word comes into play again, because I am desperately close to losing control and coming home from work every day and just binge watching the shite out of this show.
So I'm trying to limit myself to just one episode a day. Because looking back over this summer, I have accomplished so much, writing-wise and reading-wise. And those are the two things that are going to help me towards my goals more than anything.
Now that school is back in session and people are getting back into schedules and routines, I've decided to change up my own schedule a bit as well. I'm looking to get even more writing time in this fall because I'm really ready to finish up this draft and get it into the hands of my beta readers.
So here is the schedule I've made for myself:
5:00-5:30am: Wake up. Coffee. Read over what I wrote last and go over my scene outline for the next section.
5:30-8:00am: Write.
8:30-5:00pm: Work. I really have no control over this one. I have to pay the bills. But sometimes I can write or read during lunch break.
5:00-6:00pm: Gym. Or walking with a friend. Some kind of exercise. I've been sitting too much lately. I really need one of those standing desks for writing.
6:00-7:30pm: Shower and dinner.
7:30-9:30pm: Writing or research.
9:30-10:30pm: Reading
10:30pm: Bedtime
I'll be starting this on Monday and I'll post my results. It's going to be hard because I am a night owl and definitely not a morning person. But there have been several occasions over the summer where I experimented with waking up extra early and writing and I can't argue with the results. For not being a morning person, it really is phenomenal how much I can get done before leaving for work.
I think what I'm learning more than anything as a writer is that we have to be selfish with that writing time. Because the rest of the world won't be. And there are so many distractions out there. I've been able to identify a big one in my life, but I'm wondering if there aren't even more that I'm blinded to.
If you have any of your own distractions that you'd like to share, as well as how you overcome them, I would love to hear about them.
the west wing and other distractions