As it turns out, all of the distraction had a positive effect on the book today. All of a sudden, as soon as I opened my pink notebook and grabbed my pink pen, the words started flowing forth in a torrent of pink ink.
I really think that there is something different that comes with writing nonfiction as opposed to fiction. I was discussing this with an author friend of mine today. He didn’t understand what I was saying when I said that this book is harder than writing a novel, and then I drew the comparison of trying to write a 250+ page essay or research report. That’s essentially what I’m doing. And then he understood.
Oddly, though, I think that taking time to work on fictional pieces and writing articles and working on my blog and posting to Twitter have all helped. There is a subtle shift from fiction to Twitter to my blog to articles to the nonfiction book, and so doing those things together allow my brain to shift gears from fiction to nonfiction.
This isn’t procrastination–this is the writing process!
Random Readings 