One of the problems I imagine many writers face is learning how to write with distractions. I’m not talking about environmental distractions like noisy kids, although those can be a pain in the ass, too. I’m thinking more about life’s distractions, I’m thinking about the kind of distractions which ruin your concentration and imagination… the kind that ruin your day of writing if you can’t clear them from your mind.

Normally, writing is what relaxes me. Writing is the place I hide to forget my problems for a while. It’s a hell of a lot cheaper and healthier than drinking one’s problems away, although I have never turned down a cold beer or two late ar night when all else fails.

But recently life’s distractions are getting to be too much for me to just put aside so I can concentrate, lose myself in what I’m writing, and it is getting frustrating. Even listening to music while I write, something which normally helps drown out outside distractions, isn’t working.

One of the philosophies which has helped me in the past is to not worry about things I can’t change like world politics, taxes or death. But my current distractions aren’t so easily ignored. I care too much about their outcomes.

The last time I had this problem it was during a time when my wife wanted to buy a new house before we sold the one in which we were living. Being stuck with incompetent realtors who were costing us a fortune, was hard to put out of my mind so I could concentrate on writing. I got little written during those nine months. In the end, we fired the realtor, and it all worked out, lessons learned.

My current problems are ones I cannot ignore. My eighty-year-old mother is going insane and taking me along for the joyride. While trying to be the good son and see to her needs is nothing new, she is getting worse, more demanding, and, if possible, meaner. Taking away her car did not improve her mood, and naturally, I’m the one to fault for her aging. Aging parents are not conducive to writing. My father spared me. He died relatively young and quickly. Yeah, I’m a bad son, but that is another story.

The demands of relatives is typically something I can forget with an afternoon of exercise or lawn work, but recently we’ve had an additional problem which I can’t ignore. After five years of running, jumping, and chasing things, one of our Siberian husky’s knees got so bad that it required surgery to reconstruct the knee with a plate screwed into her leg bones. The surgery is called TPLO for any dog owners who’ve encountered this problem, and it typically happens to both their knees. Surprisingly, dogs that weigh as little as five pounds, not just our hefty seventy-pound fur ball, can have these problems.
Anyone who has experience with huskies knows calmness during an extended healing period is not in their resume of learned or wannabe-learned behaviors. Trying to keep her under control or having to listen to her whine, is not something which I can put aside to concentrate on writing. Put my mother and dog together, and I’m pushing it to get a few pages written a day, and this is on a new story that’s screaming to come out.

Since drinking is still not an option, especially while writing, I’ve been trying to take out my frustration by more tried and true solutions. Exercise has always proved the most productive and calming, but simply forcing myself to sit at the keyboard until my mind drifts into the story works as well. Again, listening to music facilitates that mood. Fortunately, the old habits of just sitting and writing have helped keep the process going. But then just as I get lost in the story, the phone will ring, and one of a million solicitors will try to sell me something before I can hang up or scream, “ F***U!” I have found that good old-fashion screaming has its uses, as well. I have also discovered that sometimes it’s just easier to go sit on the pot and contemplate life for a spell as it moves out of one’s way. What’s your solution?