How do you manage distractions?

Evening gang,

I've been away, but now I'm back.

Pardon the dodgy quote from The Shining but I went to a special Halloween screening last Wednesday and it was awesome. It was the extended US version and it remains one of my favourite films and both the film and particularly the book have been a constant source of inspiration.

Examples? Okay. In my book All the fun of the fair the bar in the Narracott hotel is called the Overlook after the hotel in King's book. The scene in the ballroom is based on the party scenes in The Shining. Ben Torrance, in my book Playground Cool, takes his name from Jack in the Stephen King original. There's more but I'd have to refer to the books themselves to remind myself. The point is, it's one of the best stories King has written and, even though the film differs from the book, it's powerful largely because of the central performance by Jack Nicholson and the awesome camera work.

As regular readers will know I've got two books on the verge of publication yet the editing process has stalled. Why? Too much else going on coupled with a little bit of writing fatigue. I wrote the sequel to the Jazz Cafe in a matter of months while working full time. I then started to edit a book from the back catalogue days later.

End result? I stare at the pages and nothing happens. It's occurred before and I know I just need time to recharge. I never know how long but all of a sudden it will hit me and I won't be able to keep up. But for now we appear to be done. Does this mean the books won't be out before Christmas? Maybe it does. But that's okay. You can't force it. Or you can, but the result will never be quite right.

So that's it in a nutshell. I'm now distracted. Trips to the cinema, the local pub, work is frantic and driving me mad and I lack the motivation in the evening to write. But only for now.

My question is this? How do you manage your distractions? Work, kids, tele, life. Stuff gets in the way. This stuff is fine for everyone else, that's their life. But to us writers all that is research, background noise, a distraction from the real purpose. But when the words won't flow it can be very hard to turn off X Factor or not sink another beer. Yet when I'm in the middle of a story the tele could be on full blast and I wouldn't even notice.

So for tonight I'm just going to write this blog piece and that will be enough. Tomorrow I'll chalk off another day at work and pray for a lottery win to end that particular misery. I'll keep doing that until one day the words turn up and drag me off on the next leg of our adventure.

On the plus side there's plenty of football on the box this week and we're planning a trip to see Skyfall later in the week so it's all good.

Carry on...

PS While I was just on Amazon UK grabbing the links for this blog I noticed I've now got 9 reviews for the Jazz Cafe, 8 of which are 5*. The other is a 3* and it's tone is totally different to the other reviews which makes me wonder if it's from someone I've upset. Or I'm just unable to accept someone was not totally in love with my book. Either way, it's great to know folk like what I'm doing.