The sidetracked writer

Theoretically, there are many ways a writer might get distracted when working on the first draft of her latest YA project. For instance, she might:

• Stop to research the perfect name an orca might give to itself
• Need to discover whether harbor seals sleep hauled out on land or if they sleep in the water—and then need to spend time learning about “bottling” (see above pic), the tricky seal habit of sleeping while bobbing upright in the water
• Check email, Facebook, etc.
• Go to get a coffee refill
• Pay attention to the laundry piles growing in the laundry room
• …and after all that, she might forget that her original purpose was to write the darned scene, with or without the above information.

This is why all writers need to discover brackets. You keep forward momentum much better when you’re willing to write [insert clever comeback here] instead of stopping the writing to actually come up with said clever comeback.

Could you please remind me of that the next time I stop writing to find out the social habits of harbor seals?

:) Cheryl