Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Tomorrow, tomorrow, and tomorrow...

...and maybe the day after that. I'm the Queen of Procrastination. Well, maybe not the queen, but probably an ambassador on a bad day and a low-level bureaucrat the rest of the time. I can't help it. It's in my nature. But the truly terrible thing is that my strain of the sickness only manifests when writing is concerned. All my household stuff gets taken care of, the cooking done, the errands completed without being put off. It makes one weep just thinking about it. Well, I'm tearing up, anyways.

The more I've been seriously dipping my toes into the writing community, the more I've found that I'm not alone. Apparently, there are mountains of resources and abodes for literary procrastinators, I just haven't checked them out yet. Isn't that terrible?

I have a theory, though. I think that I use up all of my "complete a task" discipline on all of my non-writing tasks for the day. As much as I push myself to get the boring things done, the less I have to motivate my daily word count. Hmm, I think I'll try that one. Maybe it'll get me out of some housework. :)

*sigh* Like that will ever happen. But, hey, a girl can dream.

Most kidding aside, I've been examining my writing habits lately, trying to see what I can do to be more productive. Unfortunately, I have no "optimum" window for writing. Morning, noon, or night, there's complete random productivity. Location doesn't seem to help all that much, either. Although, I would love to wrangle a dedicated workspace one of these days. Noise levels are hit and miss; sometime the silence is golden, and at other times the racket is awesome.

Two things that have been giving me more consistent results are planning and reporting. Lately, I've been trying to structure my work rather than fly by the seat of my pants and hope for the best (well, aside from the first draft). I LOVE FreeMind for that (saw the advice on Spacejock's site-fabulous!). Yeah, you could idea bubble on paper, but this is a cool computer program! Also, being involved in a writing group has kept me on the ball. "Reporting" my status updates and receiving professional feedback motivates me to keep on going. And in case you're wondering, yes, I was that kid that craved getting the gold star.

I'm not sure that this is a fix all way to go about things, but it's definitely a start, which is what I'm after.

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