Procrastinators Anonymous
DAY 54Word Count: 34,122
Sentence of the Day: Nicholas Brentwood's sudden stillness spread from the hallway, wound through the gap in the door, and wrapped around her shoulders.
Hi. I'm Michelle. And I'm a procrastinator. It's mind boggling the amount of time I can waste. Sometimes I wonder if there's some kind of space/time dimension known only to procrastinators that hasn't yet been discovered by scientists.
Can anyone relate to this... Grab a cup o' joe and/or Irish Breakfast Tea, fire up the ol' computer, cozy into your nook of choice with the intention of writing an entire new chapter and then -- somehow you get sucked into Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, e-mail, Drudge, surfing for new character pictures, checking the weather forecast, scoping out a new CD that you heard a clip from on Pandora...anything BUT writing.
What's up with that?
I want to write. I love to write. I have a block of time to write. So why in the world don't I write?
I suspect it's a bad combination of fear and laziness. I'm afraid that I won't be able to pick up where I left off, that words won't flow magically off my fingertips. Or worse. The words that do flow will be a steaming pile of hee-haw.
And then there's the laziness factor. It's easier to mindlessly flit from site to site instead of turning off the net and buckling down to create new material.
So what's a girl to do? There are several options.
- find a daily accountability partner
- turn off your browser before you go to bed at night, and when you wake up in the morning, refuse to turn it back on until you've accomplished your writing goal for the day
- hard core: forfeit the computer altogether and whip out a pen and paper...if your computer's not in reach, you won't use it
- give in to the urge to surf but set a timer...when the dinger dings, shut down the browser (note: this one is for the uber disciplined)
Those are a few ideas. I tried the daily accountability partner thingee back during NANOWRIMO and that worked great. This month, though, I think I'll give the ol' shut the browser off at night and write immediately in the morning before turning it on a try.
How about you? What's your plan to stop procrastinating? Remember: if you fail to plan, you plan to fail.