Make sure your family and loved ones don’t interrupt you during your_x000D_ writing time. If you’re a lawyer or doctor, friends don’t just stop by the office to chat or interrupt you from your work. But for some reason, people think writing is different. It isn’t, and you need to make clear that this is sacred time.
Interpretation
Writing, like any profession, requires undisturbed time to be productive and should be respected as such.
In this quote, Douglas Preston emphasizes the importance of protecting one's writing time from interruptions, akin to how professions like law or medicine are respected. He argues that writing is a serious endeavor deserving of the same level of respect and focus, highlighting the need for boundaries to foster creativity and productivity.
In practice
In a writing workshop, I shared a quote by Douglas Preston to stress the importance of focused writing time.
A human being creates complexity by writing a novel on the surface of paper; a weather system creates complexity by writing waves on the surface of an ocean. What is the difference between the information carried in the words of a novel and the information carried on the waves of the sea? Listen, and the waves will speak, and someday, I tell you, you will write your thoughts on the surface of the sea.
I'm drawn to kids that are already born. I think some people are meant to do certain things, and I believe I'm meant to find my children in the world somewhere and not necessarily have them genetically.
To you, Mom and Dad, and to all the moms and dads and _x000D_ families and faithful people everywhere, I thank you for sacrificing for your _x000D_ children, and for other people's children, for wanting so much to give them _x000D_ advantages you never had, for wanting so much to give them the happiest life _x000D_ you could provide
Perhaps the best function of parenthood is to teach the young creature to love with safety, so that it may be able to venture unafraid when later emotion comes; the thwarting of the instinct to love is the root of all sorrow and not sex only but divinity itself is insulted when it is repressed. To disapprove, to condemn the human soul shrivels under barren righteousness.
~As a mom, you have to look at how much time you're spending with your kids. There is nothing you will regret more in your life - nothing - than not being present for your children.~
My mother's face floated to mind, a pale, reproachful moon, at her last and first visit to the asylum since my twentieth birthday. A daughter in an asylum! I had done that to her. Still, she had obviously decided to forgive me.
I was a child that both my parents wanted. I was told from the time I was born that I was totally satisfactory. I had a chance to be what I wanted to be.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.