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| All site contents are owned and copyrighted under Crystal Bright. Use of any content on this site without express permission of the owner is prohibited. But go ahead and test me. I don't spend enough time in court now as it is. © 2002-2008 |
:: "TV: Okay, Now Turn It Off!" ::
TV: Okay, Now Turn It Off!
I don’t have a TV. A line like that said fifty years ago wouldn’t be a big deal. TV then was a luxury.
Now it seems like it’s a necessity.
I tell people today that I’m without a boob tube (wait, they don’t have tubes in them anymore, do they?)
and one would think I’ve just confessed that I hadn’t eaten food in a month. I’m constantly amazed at how
giving people are when you tell them you don’t have a TV. I’ve been offered so many free ones that I
could have had a TV in every room of my home.
So now the real and true question. Why? Why have I shunned the idiot box that has made me laugh
during “I Love Lucy” reruns and made me cry during the televised terrorist act on U.S. soil on September
11th? Believe me. It wasn’t purposeful.
I love television and all it has to offer. I even wrote a pretty long article about the many uses in watching
it. Then I made a change in my personal life. After that change, I realized that I had too many distractions
that kept me from what I love to do: writing.
Picture this. I would sit in bed, back against the camel-hump headboard, and my laptop on my lap. Right
next to me would be the remote control. I would mindlessly flick through channels until I found something
that caught my eye…or ear. Most of the time, I would leave the TV on just for background noise as I
wrote. But here’s dedication for you. During commercials, yep, you guessed it, I would put the TV on
mute. It got to the point where I would fall asleep with the TV on.
I found that without it in my home, it’s actually quiet. In that silence, I’m forced to think, and from those
thoughts I sometimes come up with a new storyline, or a new conflict to add to a current work-in-progress.
I’m also forced to entertain myself, and since I’m a lousy singer, writing proved to be a better outlet.
I’m proud to say that since giving up TV-watching since August, I have never been more prolific in my
writing since I started creating stories at the tender age of eleven. I’ve finished two manuscripts, five short
stories and plotted one new single-title contemporary romance. Also my to-be-read pile is slowly dwindling
down. When I’m not writing the next Great American Novel (okay, the novel that an editor will want and put
a big, sexy man-beast on the cover) I read anything and everything.
And on a personal note, I haven’t slept this well since I was a baby---so my mother tells me. I’m not up half
of the night watching TV until I get bored and go to sleep. I’ll usually write until I get bored (hmmm, that
sounded bad, didn’t it?). But I’m in bed at a decent hour and can usually wake up right before my alarm
goes off.
The downside, because you know there always is one, is that I miss out on all of the elements I mentioned
in my previous article about watching TV. I don’t get to see the news stories that spark a potential new
manuscript. I don’t see documentaries that will help me in my research. And apparently I’m missing some
new phenomenon called “Desperate Housewives” that’s become all of the rage.
Seriously, for all that television is good for, providing storylines, giving you ideas for settings, letting you
see actors and actresses who will eventually become characters in your story, it is good for you to just turn
it off and walk away.
Try this exercise. Give yourself a week. Turn off the TV. I would have said a day but then people would
pick a day that nothing good comes on and it’s not a big sacrifice. If the set is in the room you write in,
move it out of your room. Or if it’s too heavy, unplug it. Lose the remote. Give it to the dog as a chew
toy. And see what happens to you as a writer.
I’m not going to lie. To stop cold turkey was very hard. I would sit and think, “It’s eight o’clock. ‘Friends’ is
on” or “‘American Idol’ is about to start” or whatever show I was into at the time. But eventually the lack of
that media-stimuli sparked an even bigger interest in writing. Writing was the lover I took for granted.
Lover, I have come home.
I don’t have a TV. A line like that said fifty years ago wouldn’t be a big deal. TV then was a luxury.
Now it seems like it’s a necessity.
I tell people today that I’m without a boob tube (wait, they don’t have tubes in them anymore, do they?)
and one would think I’ve just confessed that I hadn’t eaten food in a month. I’m constantly amazed at how
giving people are when you tell them you don’t have a TV. I’ve been offered so many free ones that I
could have had a TV in every room of my home.
So now the real and true question. Why? Why have I shunned the idiot box that has made me laugh
during “I Love Lucy” reruns and made me cry during the televised terrorist act on U.S. soil on September
11th? Believe me. It wasn’t purposeful.
I love television and all it has to offer. I even wrote a pretty long article about the many uses in watching
it. Then I made a change in my personal life. After that change, I realized that I had too many distractions
that kept me from what I love to do: writing.
Picture this. I would sit in bed, back against the camel-hump headboard, and my laptop on my lap. Right
next to me would be the remote control. I would mindlessly flick through channels until I found something
that caught my eye…or ear. Most of the time, I would leave the TV on just for background noise as I
wrote. But here’s dedication for you. During commercials, yep, you guessed it, I would put the TV on
mute. It got to the point where I would fall asleep with the TV on.
I found that without it in my home, it’s actually quiet. In that silence, I’m forced to think, and from those
thoughts I sometimes come up with a new storyline, or a new conflict to add to a current work-in-progress.
I’m also forced to entertain myself, and since I’m a lousy singer, writing proved to be a better outlet.
I’m proud to say that since giving up TV-watching since August, I have never been more prolific in my
writing since I started creating stories at the tender age of eleven. I’ve finished two manuscripts, five short
stories and plotted one new single-title contemporary romance. Also my to-be-read pile is slowly dwindling
down. When I’m not writing the next Great American Novel (okay, the novel that an editor will want and put
a big, sexy man-beast on the cover) I read anything and everything.
And on a personal note, I haven’t slept this well since I was a baby---so my mother tells me. I’m not up half
of the night watching TV until I get bored and go to sleep. I’ll usually write until I get bored (hmmm, that
sounded bad, didn’t it?). But I’m in bed at a decent hour and can usually wake up right before my alarm
goes off.
The downside, because you know there always is one, is that I miss out on all of the elements I mentioned
in my previous article about watching TV. I don’t get to see the news stories that spark a potential new
manuscript. I don’t see documentaries that will help me in my research. And apparently I’m missing some
new phenomenon called “Desperate Housewives” that’s become all of the rage.
Seriously, for all that television is good for, providing storylines, giving you ideas for settings, letting you
see actors and actresses who will eventually become characters in your story, it is good for you to just turn
it off and walk away.
Try this exercise. Give yourself a week. Turn off the TV. I would have said a day but then people would
pick a day that nothing good comes on and it’s not a big sacrifice. If the set is in the room you write in,
move it out of your room. Or if it’s too heavy, unplug it. Lose the remote. Give it to the dog as a chew
toy. And see what happens to you as a writer.
I’m not going to lie. To stop cold turkey was very hard. I would sit and think, “It’s eight o’clock. ‘Friends’ is
on” or “‘American Idol’ is about to start” or whatever show I was into at the time. But eventually the lack of
that media-stimuli sparked an even bigger interest in writing. Writing was the lover I took for granted.
Lover, I have come home.