Being Creative and Dealing with Distractions: Children

Some creatives must have uninterrupted time to be productive. They need the time, or else they can’t get anything done. Their process has been described as pushing a boulder up an icy hill. Near the top of the mountain, the slope shallows. It is at this point where they are the most productive. The longer the creative stays here, the farther along with the project they get. But the time it took for them to get there takes time, which is subjective to the creative.

On a typical day, the creative spends hours in the productive zone, where they only stop when exhaustion takes hold. At that point, they slid back down to the start, where the next day, they start again.

However, on a non-ideal day, one of the pitfalls that a creative need to navigate is distractions, usually by little non-furry creatures. Every time those little beings bug them, they lose focus and end up sliding back down the hill. This restarts the process and can stall the entire day.

This is a problem with me. I have two kids who tend to be distracting and want my attention. They are kids, after all. They get hungry, tired, cranky, and want to spend time with me. I understand there need.

But how do I get things done? I wrote over 527k words last year, and I plan to write over 600k words this year. So far, I’m on track to make my goals.

Five Methods to Keep Distractions at Bay.

1. Significant other.
2. Easy distractions.
3. Wake up early/ stay up late.
4. Write around their schedule.
5. Train self to work with distractions.

Significant Other

One way to keep on task is to have a blocker. Setting up a set amount of time to get the work done and having the significant other to handle the walking distractions. This works if you have someone willing to help you with that task. Not everyone has someone ready to help or available to help.

Easy Distractions

This gets easier as the kids get older. Books, TV, computers. They are all critical ways to distract the kids with something to get some words done. Plug in a two-hour movie with some popcorn and then get to work. Getting the distractions understanding that they need to leave you alone is the cornerstone of the method. Having an easy access bin of snacks for them to munch on is also helpful, though be prepared for mess and overeating of the snacks.

Wake up Early/ Stay up Late

This one takes some sacrifice of the well-deserved sleep. This means to get up an hour earlier while the distractions are sleeping to get a few hours of work done. Or, for those night owls, it means to stay up late and get the work done in the twilight hours. This still means a sacrifice of sleep, but every hour helps. Sacrificing time watching Netflix or the lunch break at work is another time to use.

Write around their Schedule

School, dance lessons, swimming lessons. The longer, the better. This means spending money in terms of dance lessons, etc. If they’re in school, this is 6 hours of free time. Keep this time safe, and don’t let anything steal this time. If there is money in the budget for some type of lessons, use this time to get some words done. Dance lessons are an hour in length, which is a large block of undistracted time.

Train Self to Work with Distractions

The stereotype of having the perfectly clean creative space and the hours of no distractions isn’t available for everyone. My writing space is in the living room. I can’t just shut the door and block out everyone. My significant other does have her own tasks to do. This means that I have had no choice to learn how to get productive once more distraction one and distraction two are whining. This is hard and doesn’t always work, but it’s the best long term solution.

This journey is not something I can do alone. It takes support from many people for it to become a reality. The easiest way is to visit my Amazon Author Page and purchase one of my books. They are available in all countries and for free in Kindle Unlimited. I do have a tip jar set up at Ko-Fe, where you can buy me a coffee. Or you can also visit me on Facebook. Your help and support are much appreciated.

Update July 3, 2018

So I know that I haven’t been posting in a while. I am sorry for that. I published my first book, then my posting fell off. So far this year, I have written 200k words. I have two full novels published and two smaller kids books that I did with my kids.

Plus being a dad has taken up much of my time. My son is in piano, and my daughter is a ballerina.

I know. I am creating excuses for why I haven’t been posting. The suns in my eyes… the curling game is on…

No more lame excuses.

I will be moving to post once a week for now, and maybe posting more later.

In other news, my day job was going fine. Until they laid me off. It sucks, but I have written 25k words in the last 2 weeks, and I have published one book. I have another in the editing process and a short story in editing as well. I am not letting the depressiveness get to me. I am getting things done.

I also have an outstanding cover artist. His work is fantastic and has upped the game to my novels. His cover is the image for this post.

His site can be found here: Josh Thornbrugh

So now that you know that I am unemployed and working on my novels full-time cause that is the cards that have been dealt, what’s my future?

Well, the plan is to go back to school. Learn more about the writing and publishing process. It is a scary prospect, but I will make a go of it.

I will close off here, but if you all want to support my family and me, the easiest way will be to buy a book or three. Right not they are only available on Amazon and as e-books. They will be released sometime in the near future.

The full list of my published book can be found here.

My published work. 

Until next time.

Stay Shiny.

 

I’ve been Tardy…

It’s now the eighth of March and this blog post is later than it should have been. I apologize for the lack of blog posts. I have been busy.

Tonight, I should have been in bed hours ago…such, I shall ‘try’ to keep this post short, but knowing me, no promises.

This post is intended to act as an update on my writing process and some of the issues and errors that I have made. Some that I have corrected, some that I have not.

So far I have published two books and a third will be launching next week sometime. My cover artist is busy and it is likely it will be a bit before she gets to it. It’s all good.  As of the end of February, I have made a total of fifty bucks from my books and I have realized I have made some mistakes.

My marketing needs work and I have no sense of cover design. The two book covers that have been posted, I love. I think that they are lovely designs, the issue I have with them is that they’re not drawing people’s attention. No one wants to click on my books. No clicks mean they won’t buy my book.

After that, my marketing copy is bad. Bad marketing copy means that they will not be wanting to buy the book.

I have no data on how many people clicked the covers, or getting to the sale page, or putting it in their shopping carts.

The books are included in the KDP Select program. So people can read the books for free. KDP select is the only place that people will read my Phantom Sorcerer’ books. Most of the revenue made is from having ‘Phantom Sorcerer’ in KDP Select.  So far no one has read a page of the ‘Missile Attack’ book.

I think the problem with the ‘Missile Attack’ book, is that it’s a hard market to get into. And it makes sense. The kids that would enjoy the books don’t read KDP Select and don’t have credit cards to buy it.

That means that I need a new marketing strategy for my middle-grade book before I launch it on Amazon. But what to do? More research time I guess.

But from what I see in the reports that I get from KDP select, people read it. Not a lot, but when they do, its a cluster of times that they read the books. Meaning that I think that people are finishing the books. But I have no sign-ups for my newsletters or reviews on the books.

And that is that. I am currently 90% done on my June release, while I’m working on my July launch. But I haven’t gotten much down.

I have been hit by a wave of stress and a defeatist feeling. The peanut gallery is back. My inner Statler and Waldorf have made their untimely resurrection. Their presence has halted my production down to a crawl. They are an unwanted tumor in my life, and I must again figure out how to get rid of them. They’re halting my writing process and it’s not very good.

Advice would be greatly appreciated for any of the above statements and concerns. Feel free to email me at NAPedde@peddehouse.com, leave a comment, or a Twitter message.

Until next time.

Cheers.

 

 

 

 

NaNoWriMo: Update Nov 19, 2017

Well. As of this moment, I am now at 51108 words for NaNoWriMo. But as I have said before, NaNo is worthless to me unless I can get complete projects done.

At the moment I have complete my daughters story, ‘The Adventures of Evana Sweetland.’ And I have finished Book 3 of my sons ‘Space Courier’ story. But my son’s story isn’t finished. It still needs the last book.

Originally we planned to write the story in 5 parts. But as I wrote Book 3, I realized that I had included pieces that I was planning on for book 4. So now, I have gotten rid of book 4, put the parts into either book 3 or book 5 and then called book 5, book 4. Basically, Space Courier is going to be four books.

And I am not done NaNoWriMo. I have ten days to write 22500 to 25000 words for this next book. That means that I must write 2250 to 2500 words per day to complete the book on time. The goal is to have a complete work that I can spend December editing and reworking so that I can have it start being published come January 2018.

So, while others are hanging up there hats and calling it done, I am still plugging away. I am not done yet. Not even close.

NaNo Update Nov 11, 2017

So this year has gone off with a bang.

First I’d like to apologize for the lack of blog posts. I have been distracted by NaNo. It happens. For the first bit, I was writing 3k to 4k words a day. I was on track with my double NaNo goals. Then life happens.

And it happens. One day you are going strong, then the next you have fallen behind. All you can do is to try and catch up when you can. We had ordered some Ikea beds for the kids, and it took 3 hours to build them. Each.

Plus I had to go through my storage bin and find some boxes. It’s all delays. Ie. Life.

And it happens. It is not a bad thing. Cause life does that. No need to get anxious or frustrated by it. And if it weren’t NaNo, there would be no need to try and catch up. It is best not to. It is best not to be stressed by something that is outside of your control. It happens.

My NaNo, it is Nov 11, 2017, and I am at 28k words. I am supposed to be at 36k words by today. But that is only cause I am crazy and I am doing a double NaNo. Typically, I would have to have written 18K words.

So, that means I am a touch behind, but still going strong. I have also finished the first draft of the Evana Story. It is done. Time to move on to Book 3 of my Space Courier story.

Wish me luck.

Until next time.

State of Pedde- Jan. 2nd, 2017

So it has been too long since my last post and I do not have time to post much on here at the moment. Every moment that I spend writing on this blog, is one moment that I am not working on one of my many projects.

So Christmas happened which is distracting enough. The family got sick with some type of flu.

Now that Christmas is now packed back into boxes, I have more time to get my projects done.

But what do I mean by my projects? And what are my plans for all of my work?

My plan is to self-publish what I had deemed my truck novels onto Amazon or another type website. Am I going to put them there cause I think that my work has no quality and self=publishing seems like the solution that I need?

Not really. I want to self-publish for many reasons. It cuts out the elitist middle-man. It gives me more say in my work. I get to chose the covers for my work, I will have to pay for them, but they aren’t that expensive. I may be able to make one as my wife runs Pedde and Pedde Photography.

So that is the plan. Self-publish my work. Get them out there with out having someone tell me that my work is bad. I just need to get my work vetted and workshopped by some beta readers.

And that brings us to the projects that I have on the go.

I have five projects at some form of work. I brought all of the trunk novels and I am now going to go through them and I will be getting them ready to be published. I am only going to do a couple editing passes on them before I publish.

1. Dark Ages 2.0. Project is in the most complete state. I have done four editing passes on it before I tucked it away. I have given it to my First Reader (my loving wife) to read it though with a red pen. She is taking creative writing in College, so it works out. Once she is done with it, I will make some edits based on her notes and then it’ll go to my Beta Readers. I’ll make some more edits to tweek it more and then it’ll be ready. I have a cover that is mostly done.
2. Felix the Swift Part 1. This one I am fixing the story/ part way through the first draft I decided to take it in a different direction and turned it into two parts. Once I am done, it’ll go through the vetting process like Dark Ages. This project I am actively working on.
3. Felix the Swift Part 2. This is the second part to the story.. It is the original story actually. I had gotten about half way through the story before I changed it. I will need to do an extensive edit to what had written to the first part before I get finishing the second part.
4. Culture Shock. I wrote this project during the 2016 NaNoWriMo. It is currently steeping as the first draft is complete. Once I am done with Felix the Swift I will be picking this one up to do a couple editing passes.
5. Space Courier. This project is a joint project between my six year old and myself. It is going to be in the Middle Grade age group so that means that the word count is going to be much lower. Like to top out by 55k words. About half or even a third of what my adult fiction comes in at. I am writing this story along with my current project. I don’t think that it will hamper the process of the other projects as it is a much lighter of a story.

Those are the projects that I am working on, on top of all the other distractions of a 9 to 5, and kids and a wife and renos to my house.

Wish me luck?

Cheers.

Distractions Part 2

I have talked before about distractions. I listed the different types of them that I face on a day to day basis. Today I am going to talk to you all about writing times, protecting the writing times and routine in regards to distractions.

I write best when I develop a routine with my writing. I push all of the distractions aside and set the time aside and I write. With having kids, I usually write after they go to bed. That means that I have a lot of late nights.

I also make sure that my wife knows that I am writing and what my word goal for that day is. She knows that if I get my goal done, then I may have time to do other things. I write best when I write at the same time each day.

What does that mean for you? What type of distractions do you have to deal with each day? Write them down in a list if it’ll help you. The develop strategies to get the word count done. If the internet is distracting, but you like to listen to random music when you write, then go down to your local music store and buy some CD’s. Do you remember what a CD looks like? If not, google it. It’ll blow your mind. While you are at it, google 8-track, record player, Beta Tapes and the VHS. Just saying.

I have heard of some writers that have to take there laptop out of the house cause there family is too distracting. They act like it is a real job (cause it is you fools) and they go to an ‘office’. If you are like me and can’t afford to rent out a brick and mortar office to go to, then there are other options. I do like to go to coffee shops occasionally, but the cost of the coffee is sometimes prohibitive. There is other options as well.

The author that I mentioned before went to a friends house where he ‘rented’ out a small room and wrote there. He found that he could write without distractions there and get his word count down.

What you need to do to get the words done will be differently than me. I find that it is different from project to project. What works for one project, is different for a different one. I find that having a set goal, like NaNoWriMo works really well for me.

As of this writing, I am trying to get back into working on my Felix books. It is hard for me to do and I don’t really know why. I am trying a website called write track. http://writetrack.davidsgale.com/ It is a small website that I don’t think is supported by anyone anymore. But it gives me the ability to calculate my word count daily like the NaNoWriMo tracker. This one gives you more details in the program. It is working, but I gave myself too long to do my project. But that’s okay. It is Christmas after all.

That’s all that I wanted to talk about today.

Until next time.

N.A.Pedde

Third Post

So I am writing one more for the day. This one is about the distractions that we must navigate past. I only have written 600 words tonight due to having a cat and a lazer pointer. Endless entertainment. For me, I am not sure about the cat. I think that he was having a blast. Maybe…

My standard distractions that I must fight through.

Youtube. I find funny video’s and movie clips entertaining and distracting. I do, however, use youtube for the different types of music as I tend to write to music. I wrote Dark Ages to Johnny Cash music. I got my first draft of Long Journey done to Mumford and Sons. Sometimes I get distracted on the way to the youtube music channels.

Kids. I have two kids and they can get distracting. Ballet, Piano. It can get pretty busy in the house.

Christmas. It is December. Need I say more?

Wifey. She needs time too. I understand.

Renos. Luckily I own my own home and I am currently in the middle of some renovations. Actually I bought a fixer upper and it is taking me a long time to finish them.

Day Job. 9 to 5 jobs suck. But necessary. Not going into any more of this.

Video games. I have 98 games in my steam account. I have a problem okay. I know I have a problem, but when steam has megasales, I just can’t help myself. Stop judging me!

Until next time.

NAPedde