Writing Wednesday - Too Busy

So I've made distressingly little progress on my snowflake. Like, about 2 hours' work in a week. Granted, I did a LITTLE more thinking in my head on top of that, but still. That's IT??? Still on Step 3 (quick telling of the story from each major characters' POV). But I'm planning to go through what I wrote on Step 3 one more time and then move on to Step 4 (expanding the paragraph summary you wrote of your novel into 5 paragraphs).

While I don't like writing down plans, I DO like thinking about problems, and I haven't even been doing much of that lately. I think most of the problem is my own human nature, to get caught up in distractions. I taught Children's Church last Sunday and the lesson was on Mary and Martha (Luke 10:38-42). The lesson itself was about putting God first (something I'm not particularly good at). And that made me think the lesson was to do MORE for God--spend more time reading the Bible, praying, etc. Which is a good thing, of course. But in this day and age I do wonder if Satan loves to see us so caught up on Facebook, in Internet rabbit holes, etc., that both our quiet time with God, and our quiet time to think, all get pushed by the wayside. Statistically I've read that we have MORE leisure time today than any generation before us. (I'm not sure that's entirely true; farmers would be completely busy during the harvest and planting, but when the snow came there wouldn't be that much to do. But most women, excepting the ones who had a ton of servants, probably do have a lot more time to themselves. Every time I get annoyed at having to do a load of laundry, I imagine how angry my great-grandmothers would probably be to know their descendant was whining about having to move clothes from the washer to the dryer....

I do think just sitting down and THINKING was a lot more fun before I became a grown-up, and also before the Internet. I still remember when I was on the school bus or even sometimes in class, I'd daydream adventures that I could later write down. (Too bad many of those would qualify as Rescue Rangers fanfiction and thus could never be salable!)

Then in high school I'd sketch on the top margins of my notes and by college the sketches had even turned into comics. (Speaking of which, I was just thinking of that very comic lately...maybe someday I'll turn it into a novel. Hmmm.)

Anyway, now between my busy job (and there's always work I can be doing there) and the millions of rabbit holes that are the Internet (and the wonderful people who populate it), I just haven't been taking as much time to be creative. I think I need to try to carve out more time to just sit and think and listen. Easier said than done, but I'd better try.