Friday, May 27, 2011

Using Fast Food and Bribery as Effective Parenting (and Writing) Tools

As a writer, I need to work in relative silence. As a parent, I never get that silence unless I'm up before the girls get up in the morning or after they go to bed at night. However, today after work the compulsion to write was distracting the hell out of me. I decided to bribe the girls into being quiet so I could get some much needed writing time in during daylight hours. Our normal Friday night fare is carryout pizza from one of the local pizza joints here in town - but since Laely had consumed pizza for lunch at school today and the previous day, I told the girls they could have McDonald's. (As many parents know, the mere mention of McDonald's causes young children to become giddy with happiness.) I made them promise to be quiet and play nicely for a while both before and after dinner - and if they started to get too unruly there would be CONSEQUENCES (that word said in the right tone can still stop them in their tracks, even if I'm not specific as to what those CONSEQUENCES are). However, things went very smoothly between the two of them as they played with their 2 bazillion Barbies and I was able to write well over 1000 words. One would think that would make me happy. But I realized (even while I was writing) that probably half the words were just crap. I was working on the backstory, which is important to any novel. However, I tend to overwrite and give too much backstory and that's exactly what I believe I did tonight. You'd think that since I am aware of this writing flaw that I would be able to correct it. But nope, that hasn't happened yet. And I know that re-writes and edits are part of the process and nothing is ever perfect in a first draft (that little fact was again pointed out to me tonight by a very wise fellow writer - thank you) - but I don't like not liking what I'm writing. Does that make any sense? Don't get me wrong, I'm glad I wrote tonight. And I know from experience that not every writing session is going to be peaches and cream. Maybe tonight's botched session was karma's way of telling me not to bribe my children with fast food? Hmmm. I don't know. I guess tomorrow I'll have to find something else to bribe them with so I can squeeze in an effective writing session before work (unless I get up at the ass-crack of dawn and that plan doesn't always work out). Any ideas?

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