User:	deadcities_icon
Date:	2006-09-29 04:10 (UTC)
Subject:	(no subject)

I have worked to keep myself from becoming an IM fiend. So far I've managed to keep it to a bare minimum. But I like your list. Seems well-balanced.

I'm guessing that like me, you're a masterful multitasker. I know a lot of older people just don't understand the ability to juggle seventeen tasks at once, as naturally as breathing.

User: jaylake Date: 2006-09-29 04:13 (UTC) Subject: (no subject)

"Continuous partial attention" is the current official name for that stuff, as I understand it. I think I'm at (or past) the upper bound of the age cohort that's normally associated with that behavior.

And yeah, I resisted IM for a very long time, but it turns out to be quite useful on a number of levels.

User:	deadcities_icon
Date:	2006-09-29 04:52 (UTC)
Subject:	(no subject)

And yeah, I resisted IM for a very long time, but it turns out to be quite useful on a number of levels.

GAH! Don't tell me this! Enabler, enabler!!!

User: amberdine Date: 2006-09-29 05:24 (UTC) Subject: (no subject)

He's right, though!

I tried IM when it first came around. Realized it was a total attention hog for me, and avoided it for the next *mumble* years.

Through persistent, naggy LJ friends, I recently tried it again, and I'm writing more than ever. It helps if you chat with writery people about writery things, and they make you report word counts and empathize with your angst and all that stuff.

User: desperance Date: 2006-09-29 07:26 (UTC) Subject: (no subject)

"Continuous partial attention" sounds like exactly the way I work, at both micro and macro levels. I can pay continuous partial attention to a book for many months, until it's done - but I guess that's universal, the thread of it being always poised in your head even when you're doing whatever else it is that you do. But day-to-day, yup, much like you: writing, blogging, surfing, e-mail, turn and turn about, and the more distractions I find, the more I write. I used to have what m'friend shewhomust describes as "an attention span that moves in geological time"; no longer, alas, I have become flibbertigibbet, and I need my shiny toys to keep me here.

Except that I do not do IM at all, because I suspect it of being Evil.

User: helcat Date: 2006-09-29 04:52 (UTC) Subject: (no subject)

I have often wondered if the leap, for me, from writer of all-things-but-fiction to writer of fiction will take place once I disconnect myself from the internet.

It crystallized for me a little bit tonight when the power went out, and I thought to take the opportunity to flex the fiction muscle.

But I'm not certain that I can write fiction, really. Seven stories in 10 years, none of which are published. 400 articles published and ever growing. 7,000 blog entries and a devoted readership on one of those blogs, at least. Becoming a well-known writer in a circle I *never* thought I'd even walk in. Hmmm. Sure, I'm more like an edgy, hipster, gen-x version of annie lamott, but til that lands me a book or two I'm not sure that I'd call myself successful by the standards and hallmarks of measures that you and the good doctor put forward in your posts on gaming, but I got something going on that's working, at least.

And while I *hope* it will eventually lead to the storyteller in me that was so active and imaginative ten years ago waking up from her torpor and indulging some storylines I've had percolating for *years,* I find that my happiness and fulfillment as a writer doesn't really *need* that anymore. The hallmark of success for me as a writer is that I'm read. I'm paid for my work. What else am I yearning for?

For my voice to make a difference, I guess. Whether through story or meditation, I don't know, but I'm tired of the muse being thrown over so that I can write an article on how to run your business or the latest insurance products.

So I stopped with the whole pretense of being a fiction writer and decided to be a fan for a while. I still compulsively write, every single day. And if we were to ask what the morass of stuff accumulating at all of my blogs might be had I directed that energy into writing fiction, well, perhaps it would have been fabulous. And perhaps it still will be.

But when it is, I trust it to be fabulous, and that's the problem. My fiction, I hold to a ridiculous standard, and as such, I hate everything I've written that wasn't true.

So I need to write true fiction. And that's where all this blogging will eventually go to, methinks.

I know, I'm babbling--but all this talk of the things I haven't done, and the fact that I'm invisible as a writer in a field I fully expected to have taken over by now when I first started writing in 1995 is starting to make me feel like the bike commuter on an SUV highway. I'm not getting there very fast, and everyone else is apt to run me over, but when I do get there, I'll be sweaty, sexy, and the belle of the ball for all the gas I've saved.

Or something like that. :D

User: amberdine Date: 2006-09-29 05:48 (UTC) Subject: (no subject) Keyword: angels

I'm bad with multi-tasking. I try to only IM with people who can appreciate being ignored, and will encourage me to shut up and go write.

I'm not very good with mediating online stuff, either. I'll piddle around LJs and blogs and web forums forevermore, if I'm not careful. I have to be pretty diligent to do my web stuff within set times, and then not run a browser at all while I'm working.

But! There is one way online interaction helps me. Once I write a while, my muse really wants some praise. Or feedback. Acknowledgement. Something. I do not have an alpha reader sitting at my side, and sending out for critique (or submitting stuff) is way too slow. Really, I don't even want critique, I want approval.

Lucky for me, my muse is not very discerning. I can go on LJ or a web forum, make a post, get a few comments, feel the feedback-happy-vibe and go back to writing.

The only problem is that it takes a fairly significant time commitment to maintain a large network of people. Without a lot of friends, it's hard to get a quick response. But, I have no social life and don't watch TV, so I can spare a bit of my day for that. Besides, I find so many nifty people...

User: kvaadk Date: 2006-09-29 10:13 (UTC) Subject: (no subject)

Two things.

First, as a boney-fied deep-dish ADHD poster boy I have found a timer very helpful. Every half hour while I'm at the keyboard (worked my way up from every ten minutes) the timer goes off. At the sound of the bell, I compare what I am doing with what I should be doing. If the two don't match, I get back to work. (Note: Heart condition precludes my using stimulants and a misspent youth that left me with a scrap of leather for a liver means I can't metabolize Stritara safely. Do *not* get me started on behavior-controlling diets.) Even though your brain is skittering like fat on a hot skillet, you can use behavioral techniques to focus your actions long enough to get a job done.

Second, the availability of the internet makes much of my writing possible. First, almost all of the editors with whom I work regularly are on line constantly. Trillian runs in the corner of every desktop. These are young people (one guy gets a kick out of my being the same age as his mother and the copy editor at one house was just agog at me being ten years older than his father -- he apparently envisioned people my age as needing canes and relying on young nieces to feed them) and being constantly plugged in is their behavioral norm. Most of my writing is in gaming and there is a lot of back-and-forth among all the people involved with a product -- they expect me to be accessible. I have learned to function with the internet and IM engine running in the background. Also -- the quick-search abilities of the internet -- big fan of Ask; so over Google -- means I only lose about 28 minutes tracking down needed information (this is where that 30-minute timer I mentioned comes into play) as opposed to blowing a whole day following my curiosity through the library.

User:	raynotroy
Date:	2006-09-29 10:47 (UTC)
Subject:	(no subject)

This is a great discussion. I used to spend way too much time just reading news and opinion sites that really didn't add anything to my life or knowledge. This was a huge distraction and time-waster. I've tried to limit my online activities to networking with other writers and bloggers and learning new things that I can actually use. It's made a big difference.

User: tim_pratt Date: 2006-09-29 16:41 (UTC) Subject: (no subject)

Yep, I always write with the internet on, too (unless I'm, like, handwriting in the woods or something, as I do occasionally). The instant access to wide, shallow research makes things a lot easier.

User: albionidaho Date: 2006-09-29 21:12 (UTC) Subject: (no subject)

I would be one of those paraffin breaths, as well. Usually when writing (unless I'm writing with pen and paper), I'm online at the same time. I IM with friends, particularly my husband who lives in a different town during the week (it's one of the ways we stay in touch and I don't want to miss him). I have found it a useful tool when discussing projects with friends who might have some helpful insight into a story.

I also like having so much information available so quickly (again, the wonder of Wikipedia and Google). And the occasional distractions help the writing move along.

I have, however, occasionally found the 'net to be too distracting during the writing process. When this happens, I log off the IM, close the email, and get to work.

Again, as you've essentially said in the past, this would seem to be another case where the writing process is individual. A person just has to find what works for them and then do that.

User:	supaluv
Date:	2006-10-02 00:15 (UTC)
Subject:	(no subject)

Have you always been like this, or was it more distracting for you in the past? I turn my internet off before I write (I can get lost researching and end up, hours later, in totally unrelated subjects), but I'm wondering about it. Being ADHD, I try to reduce the number of distractions in my writing environment, but now I wonder if it could possibly fit into that hyperactive/all-over-the-place thinking.

User: jaylake Date: 2006-10-02 01:52 (UTC) Subject: (no subject)

Oh, I've definitely evolved into this work pattern. But when I was younger, there was no Internet or IM, or even reasonably accessible computers, so a lot of my work/coping strategies emerged gradually, as the technology changed. If I'd been confronted with my current work environment at 15, Ghu only knows what would have happened to me.