The Secret

I have discovered the secret to deep and effortless concentration on writing your novel: make a huge, embarrassing e-mail blunder at work. Your brain will be desperate to escape thinking about it. And every time your attention wanders from the story, you will remember the blunder and AAGHH! straight back into the writing you go.

It's like the late, great Spalding Gray's Theory of Fear Displacement. His advice was that if you ever lack the courage to do something, you should leave your wallet in a place where it could easily be stolen, and then go do that thing. You will be too busy obsessing about your wallet to remember to be scared.

So, my day sucked. But I made some great progress on TOB!