Nothing major to report right now other than discovering what things slow my progress and distract me interminably. I really do not like writing out of sequence. That’s now a known quantity. It’s also getting ahrd for me to resist going back and starting to edit. I must not fall into that trap. And of course, “Adulting” is never a fun thing to deal with, but I’ve also been noticing a strange phenomenon regarding my time spent online.
I’m an unrepentant news junkie and social media addict, despite my curmudgeonly attitude towards things like Snapchat and Twit-er (see?). Facebook is something I use mostly for non-writing stuff and keeping up with family and friends, and watching/listening/reading the news often grabs my eyeballs to the point where I get to be jumping from one story to the next, constantly checking for status updates for more information on stories that have absolutely NO connection to me.
What I’ve come to realize is that this has been destroying my focus and ability to hold cohesive thoughts for long enough periods of time to develop understanding. Kinda bad for a writer to be suffering with. It’s odd, but I keep wanting to scroll to see if there is something else to watch in my head, so to speak, and I can’t focus on what I’m doing in the moment. Even doing this post right now is an example of putting off what I should be focusing on. Now Steven Pressfield (if you write, I recommend you get his blog, some very good and hard stuff) will say it’s good as long as you still get your ass in the chair daily and bang out the words. If you want to be a pro, you gotta write and you can’t do it save by doing it.
And then I came across this little gem of a video and went:
“Huh… Self, is this is something that could be plausible? Why, yes it could be other self… yes it could be.”
Okay, okay, before you think I’ve completely lost the plot here, understand that my background took me into this kind of metaphysical experimentation. To my mind, this corresponds with some experiences I’ve had. I also have done a fair amount of lay person research into the basics of spiritual warfare/deliverence ministry/exorcism for the basis of my fantasy setting’s “Magic System”. BTW, I ran across this too in my many youtube research dives:
Very helpful in understanding what the heck I just did with my world. Using Prayer and the Gifts of the Spirit is a very soft magical system of sorts. It’s predicated on you not doing it, nor is an unconscious/inanimate resource you can exploit. It’s about relationships and (ironically) focus and distraction. Something that I think I need to actually address in the narrative of my story.
So it got me thinking about how much of the distraction I feel is because of the addictive nature through Dopamine hyper-stimulation courtesy of those dirty rotten poopieheads at Facebook and other online social sources, and how much could be spiritual in nature? After all, I am writing Christian based fiction dealing in spiritual warfare. Ya think that if this really is the spiritual case the Enemy would not want me writing about such things as would be a crack in the omnipresent pagan influence over fantasy?
Yeah I thought as much too. So… it’s plausible enough for me to consider how I interact online, and cutting down these “astral links” to specific well guarded gates to my own conscious and internal life. One thing I’m going to have to force myself to do is get away from video and screen time and put my nose into books rather than listening to them. I’ve stepped away from physical books over the years, I have come to realize because my eyesight got worse over the last 3 years thanks to hitting that magic age when your arms ain’t long enough and you can’t get the book close enough. It makes the physical act of reading uncomfortable for me. Gonna have to bite the bullet and change that habit.
It’s why in my recent guest post for Peter Younghusband, I used only my blog for a contact point. I’m also really struggling in how this will affect marketing of my books in the future if I decide to silence all my social media save for this blog? It makes for some hard considerations. After all, why would I want to enable bad actors (or spiritual forces) by using tools that can harm others just to sell a book?
I cast “Ethical Dilemma”…
:::rolling dice:::
Critical success!
Crap!
So that’s the way it sits right now on the eve to the one year anniversary of the release of Book One of the Akiniwazisaga: “A Light Rises in a Dark World”. It took me a 40 day fast from all social media and games except for email and this blog to get this whole thing started, perhaps, I must do it again to get Book 2 done.
More later with potentially good news.
Oh hey, one last question. I put this out to my fans and curious readers who have an opinion. If you name a character, must you pay off like Chekov’s gun or can they just disappear when they had no attachment to or are a distraction to the plot? What do you think?
Ciao for nao!
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