Several things I’ve found: If you make yourself wait till a certain time, like at the top of the hour, to check your e-mail, this works–for a time…and especially first thing in the morning. As the day wears on, it’s harder to do.

If you put off going online, or even turning on your computer, it’s much easier to stay off line. Ha! It’s like eating sugar…if I don’t have any at all, I can stay away. But one sweet and the day is wrecked.

Freewriting helps. When I’m in the midst of freewriting, checking my e-mail is the last thing I want to do because I am caught up, in the midst of words swirling about and through me, out the tip of my pen. I’d be insane to want to think about e-mail when all that’s happening.

When you’re working on something you love, you don’t tend to want to check e-mail, either, or surf around, checking out blogs. Today I worked on fiction in the morning, and a book proposal in the afternoon, and I must say, getting caught up in the work at hand makes e-mail less compelling. But you have to force yourself to dive into the work–at least I do.

It’s like walking: I am reluctant to hit the pavement, and then when I do, I get caught up in the rhythm of moving down the sidewalk or street and there’s nowhere else I’d rather be. But getting out there is the hard part.

A comment by Patry to my last blog posting had to do with it’s one thing to get your butt in the chair, it’s another to stay off the Internet. Did I ever write about that? she asked.

I feel a little like Gandhi when he was asked by a concerned mother to tell her son to stop eating sugar. Gandhi said to give him two weeks. First he had to give up sugar, then he could tell her son not to eat it.

Dennis Palumbo (Writing from the Inside Out) said the Internet is death to writers and yes, uh-huh, for sure, it is. It is to me.

I seem to get work done anyway, despite the sucking action the Web has on me. I think I got more done before. Or did I just waste time differently??

I have, on occasion, used e-mail to get writing done. In Pen on Fire, I have a chapter on it. When you email, you tend to use your natural voice and so email can be a great way to find that voice. Of course once you find that voice, then what? Then you segue into a project or something you want to write, or you freewrite.

Everything in moderation, right? But it’s hard to stay moderate when your computer is online, all the time.

I like going to cafes that don’t work with my wireless because then I get work done without giving email or the Web another thought. And I swear I’m going to work that day every day–and then I don’t.

I especially like going away without my computer. But how often do I go away?

Palumbo says that writers he works with in his practice will do that, work where they don’t have internet access.

Let me say, right here and now, that I’m going to see about that, resisting the pull of the Internet. Then I can be true about how I did it.

In Pen on Fire there’s a chapter on critique groups that’s pretty lengthy and informative, but I just received an email regarding tips for running critique groups so here’s a few things to get you started:

* Meet the same place, same time, every week or every other week. (Once a month just isn’t enough.) If you change places and times, it will become so confusing and people will start showing up the wrong day and wrong time at the wrong place, and soon everyone will quit.

* Someone needs to be in charge. This is why critiquing classes are good, because there’s someone in charge: the instructor. Someone has to be the bad guy or girl, set the rules, man (or wo-man) the timer.

* Speaking of the timer….generally you will have three readers a night. They should send their work out a few days in advance of the meeting so everyone can read their work before coming to workshop. If you have a group of seven to ten people, give everyone two minutes to critique and at the end, two minutes to the writer to respond. The writer should not talk during the critique, nor should anyone else talk while the person critiquing has the floor. When the timer goes off, the person speaking should wrap it up.

* Screen people who want to join. This might mean a committee of three or so people read their work and also know their personality and how they’ll fit in the group. You know that cliche….one bad apple….. Writing you want to read is as important as personality, and personality is as important as the writing quality. A stellar writer with a lousy attitude will ruin the group.

* I wouldn’t recommend just having an open group. You need the same people meeting regularly, which forms a bond and creates trust. If you meet at a bookstore, most likely you’ll have to let anyone into the group who wants to be in. Better to meet at someone’s house or find a room in a library or bank. Or get a restaurant to give you a room during the evening where you can buy food and hang out for two hours discussing and eating….

I hope this is helpful. I wrote a story for Poets & Writers some years back about the Fictionaires, a writers group I belonged to for a time. I’ll see if I can find it and post it on my Web site.

A comment to the last post was, “If only they’d just sit their butt in the chair and write….”

Well, next week, Wednesday, Sept. 7, at 7:30 p.m., I’ll be at the Barnes & Noble in Santa Monica doing a talk called, “How to Keep Your Butt in the Chair When the Rest of You Wants to Get Up.”

Yes, so much of writing is staying in the chair.

Check out this article by Dennis Palumbo, author of Writing from the Inside Out: “Psychotherapy in LA LA Land” in the Psychotherapy Networker, July/August 2005

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I’ve been meaning to answer Wendy’s question of a couple weeks ago. She asked, “In early June, I sent to queries to parenting magazines and I haven’t yet heard back from either magazine. How long should I wait before following up? Any advice for how to follow up?”

First off, I don’t know how your query went, Wendy–e-mail or snail mail? If you’re new to the parenting magazines, did you include clips? Often if you’re a new writer or new to a magazine, they want clips. And how many queries went out? And did you include a SASE?

It’s notoriously hard to break into the parenting magazines, or any major magazine. To answer your question, it’s time to follow up. Send a postcard–unless they like to be contacted via e-mail, then email the editor you queried. Unfortunately, many editors feel no need to respond to writers with whom they have no relationship.

If you respond to the questions above, perhaps I will be more helpful.