You Can Write, You Are Just Being Interrupted

There are a lot of articles here in Medium with tips and guides about how to write properly, better or any adjective you might think of right now, I'm not criticizing, most of them are helpful, I wrote one myself and I believe that this one I'm writing at this moment could be considered as well. 

A lot of them and even the most prominent and famous writers converge at one point, that we have to write every day, even if it is a bit. Although, I know that every single writer had those days that it is just impossible to write a single line, at least once. 

We try to make it a routine and to stick to it, implement the writing process to our daily doings, but when happens that one day something blocks us from writing, we lose our focus and will, even think that we are not good writers and we were supposed to spend our time with anything else. 

That's is not true, maybe you are just being too much interrupted. Yes, that is one of the most things that prevent writers to do their jobs, a slight interruption can be devastating to the quality of simple writing.

"a slight interruption can be devastating"

Writing is an artistic manifestation, like a painter can't get his job done with someone poking him, writers can't do as well with someone disturbing him.

Find your place to write

What we must do then, so we can write properly without being interrupted? First of all, find a place wherever you write, your house, a cafe or an office, that you may find tranquility to do your work, Stephen King in his book "On Writing" says that writers must do their work with closed doors. 

I know, not everyone has a place to simply close the door and prevent people to come in, I myself don't have it. What to do then?

Educate people to respect your working time

Education is the key to everything. When you are writing and someone comes to talk to you, you cannot give what they want (your attention), because you will be rewarding and stimulating them to do the same thing.

That being said, two things can be done in this situation, you can ignore the person or you can anticipate their actions and teach them that this moment is important to you and they should not disturb (use a plack if necessary).

"…this moment is important to you…"

Photo by Morgan Housel on UnsplashI know, that sounds pretentious to call it working time if you like me received 4 dollars in the past month writing for Medium, and if you like me live with your parents and know that they would never understand it. There is always the moment that they are sleeping to do what we love most.

At this moment, I'm writing to you at 3 AM, dawn is a wonderful moment to do our magic, the most exciting moment of the day.

Just keep doing

As I said before, writers cannot stop writing, there must be a place and a moment in your day that you can do that without the unpleasant interruptions. If you don't, politely educate people to respect your time, if politely doesn't work too, well… ignore them and keep writing and if the person thinks you are being rude, you are, so is the person who is interrupting you.

You do not owe politeness to rude people.