I’ve been thinking about procrastination. I do it, do you?
Here are a few ideas I’ve started using that seem to help a lot.
- If I write about my projects in my morning journal, I feel an urge to write more about them when I go to the computer.
- My chiropractor says that for the sake of my back and neck I should not sit at my computer for more than twenty-minutes at a time. I bargained with him, saying, “How about thirty?”“Okay, says he, but only if you walk a mile or more every day.”
“Aha,” I said feeling boastful…”I do!”
When I started setting the timer on the stove in thirty-minute increments, I was able to immerse myself in the flow and found myself setting it time and again. Two hours can pass swiftly in that way, so that I have a feeling of accomplishment when I close shop at the end of the day. The same concepts apply to the thirty-first draft as for the first.
3. I usually write 500 word blogs. For that length, I can come up with a mini-story that is usually a satisfying read. Novel scenes can be done in the same way, but they sometimes need to be longer. To me, a scene is a change of characters, places or activities.
4. When it’s bedtime, I can ask my sub-conscious to work on a blog, a poem, or a novel scene during the night. In the morning, I can jot down some notes, and thus am I motivated and inspired to inch toward completion. I’ve written and published three novels so far and I’m now working on a couple more.
What do you do to cure procrastination, even temporarily? How do you keep yourself going? What makes writing easier and more enjoyable for you?
“Inch by inch, life’s a cinch. Yard by yard, life’s hard.” John Bytheway
