My son is at camp for the whole week. It’s 2:00 on Monday afternoon. I’ve been looking forward to all the writing that would occur this week. I mean, I’ll be by myself during the day. Hours and hours to do nothing but write. I have a short story that is only a couple of thousand words from complete. I have critique group stuff to critique. I have manuscripts to get ready to send in to for the SCBWI Mid-South Fall Conference. I need to send out emails for the August SCBWI Evansville event with Margaret McMullen.
Instead, I am checking out Twitter and Facebook and the camp website. (They post new pics every day, and my son might be in one of them!) I did write a new poem to post on Twitter—a Fib about not getting writing done.
Wait
Stall
Put off
They call it
Procrastination.
Like this Fib; instead of writing.
Does that count as “writing?” Hmmm…technically, yes.
Now I’m even updating my blog! Wow, I’m really grasping at straws to put off the writing, huh?
The question is, why? I love to write. The last several weeks, I have been thinking, I’ll miss my son, but I can’t wait to work on my story. I wonder how many thousand words I’ll get written? Well, one day is almost down and the grand total is 14—from the Fib!
Maybe it’s because the sun is shining right outside the library window. Or maybe I expected to get so much done, that I am afraid I won’t meet my expectations. Maybe it’s because I have a new (used) car, and it’s so much fun to drive that I really just want to keep zooming around town running errands (something I normally hate to do).
Well, in the immortal words of every procrastinator…maybe tomorrow…
In the meantime, I would love to hear from other writers out there. What causes you to put off writing—the very thing you supposedly love to do? More importantly, what do you do about it? Post your best tips and stories to help us all get to work!
Thanks…and get busy!
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2 comments:
About the time I turned forty I made up my mind I would write an hour every morning. Results have been mixed. I've had long stretches when I've observed it religiously. My biggest distraction is the Internet and the constant temptation to research things, e.g. I'm writing a scene set at a certain castle in Helsingor, so I waste several hours/days browsing travel blogs describing others' experiences there. The other problem is when life intrudes, as it has lately. And now I'm procrastinating at work ... so this weekend I'll have to work, instead of writing, to catch up ... it never ends.
This has been said many times and many ways ... no, not Merry Christmas ... the key is really to set a regular writing time/place/routine and establish a daily word count you intend to reach. Then stick to that every day, or some number of days a week. It's a promise to yourself, and it's like paying yourself first in a budget. It doesn't have to be a lot of words. 500 is a good target. If you write 500 words a day 5 days a week, in a year you'll have drafted one 125,000 word book, or two 60k word books, or finished two drafts of a 60k word book, etc. It gets a little trickier to manage goals when you're editing/revising, but you can set goals like "1 chapter reviewed/revised" a day. And the good thing about this is that it's regular writing exercise. As Stephen King said, if you lift weights everyday, you may not end up being the strongest person in the world, but you'll be stronger. And if you write every day you'll be a better writer.
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