Lets Talk Story

 Procrastination or The Art of Finding Other Things To Do


It's 9 p.m., and I am finally sitting down to write. I have been home since five but distracted myself with other things, like dishes, laundry, and sweeping the floor for what feels like the five hundredth time this week. (Perks of having a long-haired dog, hair is everywhere.) I sat down at one point, opened up my current WIP, and checked where I was. I pulled up the story I am editing and stared at the page. I got up, put the laundry away, cleaned the bathroom, and surfed the net. 

Distractions. They are everywhere.

My dog is barking like she needs to go out, but really, she only wants a cookie. My phone dinged, I need to check and see who it was. I should do the dishes. Then I could run the dishwasher. 

No! It's writing time. It's  "sit down and spill words onto the page time." 

I should call my parents and see how they are doing. I need to take Misty for a walk around the block.

You need to write. You are 26 pages away from where you left off in the WIP. You are 30 pages away from finishing round two of edits in Secrets. You have a short story to write for the Write On contest. Instead, you are getting distracted by shiny, pretty things.

I know I am not the only person who goes through this. It happens. We get distracted. We may be in the middle of writing and suddenly need a different way to say "smile," so we look it up online. Then we get stuck in a rabbit hole, one search spiraling out and out into another search and another until suddenly two hours have passed, and all we managed to write was one sentence. 

There are several things you can do to break the procrastination. One is to have a ritual before you write. A simple thing, like lighting a candle, ringing a bell, circling your chair three times, and summoning the muse. Well ... okay, maybe not the last part, but you get the general idea. I have a chime I will ring and a candle. I also have an amethyst crystal, which reminds me of a pen. And when I am stuck, I have my elliptical. 

Other things you can try are going for a walk, doing mundane chores, writing anything else, working out, and riding a bike.  

Establish a routine. Give yourself a goal. Stephen King has a goal of writing two thousand words a day. I'm not that disciplined, but I have worked hard at establishing a routine. Every morning, I spend half an hour writing what Julie Cameron calls Morning Pages. It is basically a journal. I wake up, work out, take Misty for a walk, feed everyone, and sit down with my coffee at my desk to spill my brain out. All of the junk in my head is dumped in the morning. Often, I will puzzle out where I am stuck in the story. In the evening, after I have done all the chores, walked the dog, and slipped into my loungewear, I will write for one to three hours. 

Procrastination is part of the writing process. The trick is to get the mind back on track. On that note, I'm going to take the dog for a walk. ;)






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