For those of you who missed the A to Z Challenge (or just forgot because I’m taking forever to finish the series), I’m currently writing about the A to Z of things writers (especially new ones) should know about writing.
Today I’m tackling Procrastination, because it’s a pain in the butt.
I mean seriously. We’re writers. We love writing. We love having stories to share with the world. It’s like breathing to us. Things just don’t feel right unless we’re working on our stories.
You’d think that it means that we just hop to work whenever we have time to write.
Weeeeeeeeeeellllll…
No.
No, we don’t.
Because there’s tv and chores and all manner of “legit” activities like social networking or refreshing ranking pages to death to see if our book babies are doing okay.
Really, though, it reminds me of this scene in Stuart Little. Except in this case, we’re both the mouse and the cat at the same time. Or maybe Stuart is the good writer side and the cat’s the bad writer side. Either way, the cat having his way and not doing what he should usually ends up with someone getting hurt. (Or with writing not happening, which does hurt.)
The sad thing is that we do this to ourselves all the time. Especially when we know that some major deadline is looming over us. It makes us feel like we’re totally overwhelmed. Drowning even. But instead of just sitting down and just getting the stuff done, we make things worse by doing:
Nothing.
Which of course overwhelms us even more.
Really. Try not to do this. It’s a vicious circle. Because it makes you not enjoy writing even though you love it. Have you ever loved something and not like something (or someone) at the same time? It’s incredibly frustrating.
The thing is, if you no longer like writing, you’ll put it off more, which means that it overwhelms you even more later. Which makes you like it less. And on it goes.
Stop the cycle. Don’t put writing off when you can do it right now. Put off the things you want to do now but know you could do later.
Trust me. Your writing will thank you for it.
Any addicted or reforming procrastination addicts here today? What’s your method of choice? If it’s blogging: STOP NOW AND GO WRITE.
After you’ve commented, of course. 😉
The Five Year Project 