I have two chapters left, and then the second draft is finished. \u00a0It has taken forever, but I feel like the story is much stronger for the work that I’ve put into\u00a0it. \u00a0Before I get into it tonight, I want to talk a little bit about where I do my writing, and how it relates to advice that I want to take from Stephen King.<\/p>\n
The book I’m reading\/listening to these days is\u00a0On Writing<\/em> by Stephen King. \u00a0It is much more interesting than I expected. \u00a0Actually, I’m not sure what I expected. \u00a0I’m enjoying it, and I’m finding his advice reassuring.<\/p>\n One thing he talks about is the writing space. \u00a0He advises that you choose a place that has a door that you can close. \u00a0When you close the door, you not only shut the world out, but you shut yourself in so that you can focus on the world you’re creating. \u00a0You stay in that place, focused, until you reach your word count.<\/p>\n I would love to take this advice, but I don’t have anywhere like this. \u00a0I have some space in the garage, but I can’t really close the door. \u00a0It’s not really a quiet place that I can go to get away from the world. \u00a0The world wanders in. \u00a0The washing machine and dryer rumble a few feet away from my computer. \u00a0It’s dark. \u00a0Too hot in the summer. \u00a0Too cold in the winter. \u00a0There are insects. \u00a0The world is very much present in my garage.<\/p>\n I wind up getting most of my writing done when I leave my house and go to someplace like Starbucks or Panera. \u00a0The world is around me, but most people keep to themselves. \u00a0There are worlds of silence in crowds of strangers. \u00a0Sometimes the music is too loud. \u00a0Sometimes there are friendly folks\u00a0brave enough to cross barriers in order to\u00a0make conversations. \u00a0Most of the time, however, people pretend that other people don’t exist. \u00a0They sip their drinks, their faces illuminated by the various screens they’ve brought with them. \u00a0Invisible social shields cloak us all, creating islands of isolation.<\/p>\n Maybe someday, I’ll have my own office at home. \u00a0That would be nice. \u00a0For now, I’m doing what I can. \u00a0I go out. \u00a0I buy a decaf coffee, my rent for the evening. \u00a0And I block out all of the distractions.<\/p>\n Speaking of distractions… time to get to work! \u00a0I’ve got a story to finish!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I have two chapters left, and then the second draft is finished. \u00a0It has taken forever, but I feel like the story is much stronger for the work that I’ve put into\u00a0it. \u00a0Before I get into it tonight, I want to talk a little bit about where I do my writing, and how it relates […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-814","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/814","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=814"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/814\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":815,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/814\/revisions\/815"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=814"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=814"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=814"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}