In this week’s Striving Novelists Support Group, we discuss the impact of writing environments and distractions on our creative processes, emphasizing the need for a balance between silence and background noise. How do you enhance concentration and manage distractions while writing? Finally, the importance of community support, and the role of deadlines in maintaining focus.
When I got my bachelor’s degree—decades ago, now—I started out in film school, with aspirations of making it big in the movies. However, over the course of four years, I ended up taking so many writing classes that I had to change my major to Media Communications, with a Scriptwriting emphasis, in order to graduate in my target year.
In the two decades since, I found myself drifting through several jobs that just paid bills. I have worked as a photographer, a truck driver, tour manager, and online marketing consultant. Finally, the most recent decade, I have settled for working as a software engineer. It pays well, and is something I am actually pretty good at. But I find myself longing to go back to the roots of what I really want to do—what my earlier college career should have told me I need to do—write.
In the two decades since, I found myself drifting through several jobs that just paid bills. I have worked as a photographer, a truck driver, tour manager, and online marketing consultant. Finally, the most recent decade, I have settled for working as a software engineer. It pays well, and is something I am actually pretty good at. But I find myself longing to go back to the roots of what I really want to do—what my earlier college career should have told me I need to do—write.
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