Monday, September 29, 2008

Attention Spans & Motivations


Playing on iTunes: "Blackbird" by Evan Rachel Wood





It's "Hop-Along-Monday" people...and you know what that means!! Cheesy-ness abound. Every Monday I will give you a new crap saying that my good friend Conor uses (on almost a daily basis...*sigh*). Today's cheesy saying...drum roll please...."Get over yourself." Now, that doesn't sound THAT crap, but it really depends on the context in which it is said.

Example:

Me: "Oh magoodness that work-out wore me out!"
Conor: "Get over yourself."

or......

Me: "I can't stand it when Suede talks in the third person!!"
Conor: "Get over yourself."

Do you see how this might be even remotely irritating and cheesy after a while? He has been saying this one for a few months now with no end in sight. I may have to hit him.

ON TO THE POST!!

Attention spans.........*goes to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich*.............
Oh crap! I forgot I was blogging. What was I talking about? Oh yeah, attention spans.

I am surprised that in the past two months I have been pretty diligent with my writing schedule. I write for about four hours a day, working to get at least one, if not two chapters written and have refrained from doing too much editing. (Although I am starting to get ancy.) I think I have kept my excitment for this project up, primarily b/c the story kicks ass but also b/c I have really been working to emmerse myself in the story. I have a playlist that I listen to when I am not writing. I watch a lot of movies related to the genre I am writing in. And I read a whole lot of books on writing to keep my motivation up.

QUESTION:
Out of curiosity, how do you guys keep your motivation up for a certain project? If you work on numerous pieces at once, how do you keep your excitment for all of them?

9 comments:

Allie said...

As you know, I've got one of the worst attention spans known to man.

Work projects are hard for me to complete, unless I'm somehow invested in them.

Wow, I just completely forgot where I was going with that.

G. B. Miller said...

Wanting to prove to myself that I can keep other people interested is what motivates me.

Yeah, right.

Seriously, I have two to three different things going on at any given time. I simply try to make time for each of them.

Like my blog. I post every two days on my blog, and in between posting I work on a re-writing a short story.

It's just a matter of blocking out a section of time to work on them.

Terra Chandler said...

Allie, your kinda special.....but oh, how I love it!! CALIFORNIA IS SO GOING TO BE KICK ASS!!! We don't have to have any attention span (except while driving)!!!!

Terra Chandler said...

Georgie, that is definitely a huge part of my motivation as well. I keep thinking about what it will be like to show everyone my bound and published work. It gives me chills (good ones) and keeps me goin'.

Janet said...

My motivation is a solemn promise to myself to write, revise, edit, polish and shop a real live novel. No excuses, no backing out. Plus I made it public.

It's like the first time I went off the high diving board when I was a kid. There was a line-up, all the way down the ladder and beyond. I refused to think about what I was doing till I was actually on the board. The fear of humiliating myself by trying to squeeze back down the ladder was greater than my fear of jumping off. I knew this, of course, and had deliberately manipulated myself. So I did it again with the writing project. It's been slow, because there was quite a learning curve, but the hardest part is already over. :o)

For short-term motivation, incremental, measurable goals, that I also make public.

Terra Chandler said...

Janet, that is an excellent story!! It fits perfectly!! It's like your own personal form of pear pressure. I was deathly afraid of the high dive until my mother made me join a class. Incidentally...I am still deathly afraid of the high dive. lol. I think making it public is a great motivator. I have told every one of my friends, and they keep asking how it's going. I can't imagine myself saying "Oh, I gave up on it." So yea, definite motivation.

colbymarshall said...

It is soooo hard to keep up my motivation, so I have gotten to where I set myself a word goal for the day, then I write it down o a post it at my computer, broken up into smaller increments. Like, if I want to get 3,000 words written today, I might write it broken up into 1000k, 500k, 500k, 500k, and 250k, and 250k. That way, it seems more manageable to me, and I can cross off the increments as I go, feeling like I'm getting something accomplished. And more often than not, once I get started, I write more than I planned to!

Thanks for visiting my blog...come on back anytime!

hana said...

I'm like Georgie B. I like working on a few projects at time so I don't get bored with just one.

I have a crappy attention span, so I've never attempted writing a novel. Short stories and articles are more my speed.

Rachel Burton said...

Ih dear, I'm going to be saying "Get over yourself" all day! (and I also hate when Suede talk about himself in the third person.)

I'm in the querying process with my last book and it's been hard to motivate myself to start another one. I'll get there one day!