This week I’ve been very distracted from my writing. Every time I think about sitting down and getting on with it something else grabs my attention and the moment is gone.
Some things are genuine and reasonable – poorly family members, classes, work etc – but sometimes I have to admit I get a little bit of clicker’s remorse because I find an interesting article to read online and that takes me to something else, and something else, and then the evening is gone.
The worst thing is that I know I’m doing it and yet I carry on. Today I read about 15 pages of online comments about a particular news story. They all say the same thing – boo to you, person who doesn’t share my opinion – but I keep reading in the hope that some nugget of understanding will come to me that I didn’t have before.
I think I need a week of no internet, but then I wouldn’t Skype, wouldn’t blog, wouldn’t keep up with the news. So maybe as a compromise I’ll limit myself to an hour a day and try to recoup some of that lost capacity. Wales is fast approaching and I need to get moving on the whodunnit to make the most of my time away.
In other news – I was looking at the 100 novels list and I haven’t read 89 – Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison , 90 – A Bend in the River by VS Naipaul, 91 – Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie or 92 – Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson. In fact the closest I’ve got to these four was during a university course on Race and Ethnicity, when I was encouraged to read Toni Morrison’s book Beloved. There were certain sections we had to read for class and I remember it being pretty hard going; I don’t remember reading the whole book. Of all these four writers it is Morrison whose subject stirs the most sociological interest – I feel it is important to understand more about the experience other people have of life – but Housekeeping might make my pile of books to read if for no other reason than the almost 50/50 sense of love and outrage its inclusion in the list seems to have caused!
And finally – this is a little embarrassing but I was looking back at old posts and realised that two of the books I’ve read recently – Life of Pi and The Caliph’s House – plus one I need to read in the next week – Gone Girl – were specifically named in a blog last June, with a note saying I wanted to read them in the next month. I really need to kick the reading up a notch!
Happy writing
EJ
🙂
Becoming a writer 
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