Tuesday, September 29, 2009

My Brain Just Spontaneously Combusted

And now a word about reading agent/author/publisher/editor/et cetera, et cetera, et cetera (said in the voice of the King of Siam in The King and I) blogs:

Don't do it until you've finished your manuscript. 

Okay, maybe that's a stretch. How about this:

Make sure you spend more time WRITING than you do READING. Fair enough?

This is a lesson I've had to teach myself recently, because if there's anything I like to do...it's get WAY MORE INFORMATION THAN I NEED. Have you seen those Bing commercials? Yep, that'd be me. 

Sure, some of it is really useful. However, some blogs send me into a black hole of information that I have a VERY difficult time extracting myself from (sort of like the bag of chips I found myself eating yesterday afternoon - ahem). I have even found myself reading YOUR lovely blogs for hours on end, because so many of you are so incredibly talented!

Point is, if you're spending more time researching how to get published or how to find an agent than you are writing your actual manuscript...it's time to exorciiiise the demons (a la Poltergeist).

Have you been guilty of this? Please, make me feel better...LOL

13 comments:

  1. *raises hand* Guilty, absolutely. It comes down to balance, which I'm better about some days than others.

    Mmm... chips...

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  2. Yes definitely. I started researching agents MONTHS before I even finished the first draft of my book. Yes, it was bad. But all that research was useful and I'm convinced that if I hadn't read every post ever written about how to write a query letter I never would have gotten an agent. So good things come out of wasted time... sometimes :)

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  3. Oh for sure! I'm guilty! There's so much great information just at the tip of our fingers! It's easy to let it distract us from the goal of writing!

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  4. Blog Land *is* black hole. Yes, says Wendy and goes on to read and comment on more blogs. But I am very excited about the ending I came up with to my WIP.
    ~ Wendy

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  5. Guilty. I love this post, especially the title.

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  6. Yes. I love the late Kate Duffy's advice to writers: "Get off the Internet and write!"

    So true. I should follow that more.

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  7. I am sooooo guilty of this! I must revisit my priorities quite often and stay focused! I should get off the internet right now, but I'm going to church in 30 minutes, so I might as well visit my favorite blogs until then, right?

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  8. Oh, yup! That'd be me! But it's soooo hard not to do this. Blogs are my lifeline to other writers and a world that sometimes seems so faraway for this stay-at-home mom. However, we must have priorities. Darn.

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  9. I am so incredibly guilty of this at time. I seem to be getting a better hold of things since I returned from the conference. Hopefully the trend will continue!

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  10. THANK YOU, LADIES! Glad to hear I'm not the only one who had to learn this lesson. I'm just hoping that, like Natalie said, "good things come from wasted time...sometimes"!

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  11. I agree with you and that is a trap I tend to fall in time and again. Thanks for the push in the right direction. Being out of town, with a partial internet connection has given me a lot of time to actually write. Today was so lovely.

    Oh, nice reference to The King and I! I love that movie, but then again, I love almost every movie made back then.

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  12. I fight this all the time. I follow so many great blogs and I get sucked into the vortex. You're right though, writing needs to come first.

    Thanks for stopping by my blog and following, btw!

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  13. Totally guilty. I think if I spent even half the time writing as I do reading how to write I'd be done three books by now. Sometimes you just need to do it.

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