Coffee With David

Ray Bradbury use to rent a typewriter to write his stories. He would deposit money into a coin deposit and it purchased a certain amount of time with the machine. While I do not know how the timing mechanism worked, it taught Mr. Bradbury how to write fast and stay focused. It forced him to write to a timer.

I am no Bradbury and I am beyond grateful that the days of the “no spell check“ manual typewriter has been replaced with the laptop. However, since I write whenever I can steal sometime, I find myself writing to a timer of sorts. The timers I write with has been more the “lunch hour “ timer –really about 40 minutes since my laptop came with vista and it takes about 10 minutes to boot up and bring up word and an equal time to shut back down.

Yet, even this can be a distraction. So, I have been trying a new experiment. I have set an egg timer and raced my muse against it. It seems to work, though I become more crabby when I am interrupted. It is a race against time to get the best writing I can do out in a short amount of time. I am thankful that I have a fast typing speed, but the method should work with any form of writing.

If you are a fellow writer, have you tried to write to a timer? What have been your results?

If you are another kind of artist, have you tried it? Maybe you paint, sculpt, play music, or something else. I don’t care what your media is, I would love to know if you have tried this and how it worked for you.

Thank you for reading and please visit www.davidalanlucas.com for up-to-date information about the stories and blogs I am working on.