I know I should write something about writing for Blogathon 2012 since it is for writers. I have to keep myself on task when I work throughout the day. A lot of people say that the internet and especially Twitter will keep them from getting back to work. They’re great things, yes, but I have my phone so I can play with that pretty much anytime. What gets me side-tracked is the silly Xbox 360.

I’ve loved playing games when I was a kid with my Nintendo. I never had older siblings to show me how to play any of these games and my friends certainly weren’t interested. (Some of the girls I was friends with as adults even thought playing video games was stupid – can you imagine?) So now that I’ve traded in the little Playstation 2 that I bought myself when I first started teaching full-time (those kids and their tales of fun inspired me to do it), for the glorious set up of PS3, Wii and Xbox that we have now.

I was always a fan of GTA (I’ve even seen Rockstar North with my own eyes!) and The Sims when left to my own devices so those were the games I went to first. But I finally tried the first-person game (odd – I like first person POV for books but originally only liked 3rd person POV for video games) and now I’m hooked on Skyrim. Well, I was until I made myself stop playing the stupid thing each day. Even in the evening I stopped bothering and opted for reading just so I wouldn’t get caught up in wanting to play for hours on end during any available time I had. It’s helped a lot and even made me lose interest which is an extremely good thing.

I love video games but my playing them isn’t really contributing to the world in a positive way (well, when I help someone play it I am.) So less Xbox, more typing and reading. That’s my writing advice for today. It works for me.