The Value of Distraction

Okay, so after posting yesterday about how the television and music and other aural/visual distractions have to go off, what did I do today?  I watched a lot of Doctor Who (I'm not going to say how much, but it was not an insignificant number of hours) and scrolled through Pinterest looking at hairstyles and evening gowns instead of writing.  Why did I do that?  Was I stuck?  Did I not have anything to write about?  Was I having trouble getting started?  Well, I wish I could lie and say yes, but really the answer is no.  I'm not stuck, I've got plenty to write about, and I've already started.  So what was the problem?

The problem was that I never sat down and resolved to write anything.  I procrastinated and said, "After this one episode." and "Ooh, look at this, _______ would totally wear this." and "Well, I might as well finish..."  The end result being that nothing got written.  So now I'm writing this blog post instead of what I had intended to write.

All right, that was my confession, but what did I learn from this (aside from what I already knew, which was that I cannot be trusted to write and watch Doctor Who at the same time)?  Quite a bit actually, though I probably could have learned it without quite so much procrastination.

Characters don't live in a vacuum.  

It is not enough to say that a character is a female Scarlet Pimpernel or a courtesan on the run from her past.  Every character's actions is informed by her past, and that past informs her present actions.  Knowing the character's present isn't enough if you intend to write her believably for an extended period of time.  You have to know her past, maybe not every detail, but enough to know why she reacts in particular ways, what parts of her past impact her present.  Of course, that seems like a no-brainer if you think about it, but sometimes you can get too caught up with writing the present to consider the character's past.  Conversely, you shouldn't be afraid to allow your character to change as circumstances demand.  A character who has a history of feeling inadequate can still grow to be emotionally fulfilled, it will simply take time and careful plotting.  

Thus the lessons of Doctor Who as applied to writing.  Which could lead me into a whole discussion about the Doctors and his various companions and how...never mind.  This is a blog about writing and I'm only on my third entry, so I'll save the Doctor Who fandom for some other time.

Clothing tells you a lot about a person.  Well duh.  That's true in real life, why wouldn't it be true in fiction as well?  But between plotting the next major event, crafting dialogue, and introducing characters, sometimes fashion gets left by the wayside. Which is a shame, because what a character wears is part of what makes them who they are.  For example, wearing elbow length opera gloves to the ball isn't something worth remarking upon, but when the same character wears those same gloves down to breakfast and to the beach, then the reader knows there is something else going on.  But, it only works if you included those gloves in your original description at the ball.

Which brings us to Pinterest, that endless library of evening gowns and up-dos.  Just casually scrolling through my boards netted me a dozen hairstyles and outfits for nearly half a dozen characters.  Never will my characters be forced to wear the same dress twice because I'm simply not creative enough to come up with a new gown (if the plot demands it, then that's a different story).

Of course, that brings me back to the procrastination.  Could I have learned those lessons, found those images, and still gotten my writing done by spending a fraction of the time actually concentrating on what I was doing?  Yes.  So that's my resolution.  To stop procrastinating and disguising it as multitasking and actually get things written.

Tomorrow.