I recently read something from Fran Lebowitz when I was trying to procrastinate on my own writing that called me out on my procrastination and made me realize that most of procrastination is a self-made emotional problem.
"Not writing is more of a psychological problem than a writing problem. All the time I'm not writing I feel like a criminal. ... It's horrible to feel felonious every second of the day. Especially when it goes on for years. It's much more relaxing actually to work."
Often procrastination is not about writer's block or even too much work, it is about an emotional block. I sometimes like to call that the Twitter Block. Simple ways to distract yourself from writing in this fast-paced, social media world with Twitter and Facebook and Instagram as an avoidance of dealing with characters or the way a story is unfolding.
The problem with giving in to that procrastination and finding ways to distract you away from your writing is that it does feel almost criminal after a while. You start to feel bad about not writing but not enough to stop the procrastination until it feels almost "criminal" as Fran Lebowitz described. Your fingers being to ache to hold a pen, your brain starts to move a million miles, jumping from topic to topic, idea to idea, character to character. All trying to push you and pull you and get you to just sit down and WRITE!
Then, when you feel you can't take anymore you shut off the computer, you turn off the TV, you close the distractions in your mind and you sit down. You sit down and take up your pen and put it against the paper and the words start to pour out of you. You feel the movement of the pen and hear it pass over the page in a noise so familiar to your ears it is like comfort. Pages and pages fall to the side filled with the progressing story and the interesting lives of your characters. You stop only when your hand begins to hurt and your brain, energized by the release of ideas, begins to tire from the constant motion of the story.
Finally, you lean back in the chair and feel yourself give a sigh. That procrastination feeling has gone, at least for this day, and the constant whisper in your ear to write has been silenced. You are no longer the criminal procrastinator and you feel a bit at peace with the idea that the writing police you imagined tracking and chasing you with each tick tock of the clock as you ignored your writing, they have now been satisfied. No more writer's jail for you only writing. It is amazing what pressures a writer puts on themselves. They become their worst enemies when they know they want to or need to write and yet find ways to sabotage themselves. A creative mind is always moving. It is trying to make sure it is moving towards productivity and not procrastination that may sometimes be a challenge. To that, as I have fallen into this trap many times myself, I offer only this one piece of advice...
Stop, Breath, Write!
Friday, March 14, 2014
Tuesday, March 4, 2014
Stuck Between Re-Editing and Re-Writing
I have been stuck at home in the snow, overwhelmed with work projects and trying to keep my life in order which is a hard task as a single, working mother. Unfortunately certain areas of life have fallen to the wayside because of this. One of those would be my personal writing. I have done plenty of thinking of the characters and the story. They are familiar companions at this point. What I have done little of is actual writing.
The other day when I was thinking of my writing though I started to envision, not the continuation of the story and where I had left it off, but rather a new beginning. I started to re-write the beginning with the idea that it would flow better with the story line which may be true but it got me to wondering when we look back to what we have written because we are stuck and can not move forward where we are in our current writing. I think in life everyone does this. They are scared to move forward or don't know what the next step will be and so it is easy to fall back to the past as a comfort because it is done and completed and the results already proven.
The problem with not moving forward with the story and going back to the beginning is that it is easy to convince yourself that you are just editing or re-editing so that the work can flow better. In reality you are re-writing and then the inevitable feeling that the story has become too chaotic and unfocused. You want to move forward with Chapter Twenty-Five (as in my case) but the only thing you are thinking about is the beginning and re-writing it.
Stop! Breathe! Then ask yourself these questions:
1. Is this really necessary now or am I avoiding a difficult passage by re-creating an old one?
2. Will it add value to the story? If you are going to return to the beginning and re-write entire passages before you are ready to edit the book fully is it because you know it will add value to the story. Think carefully because when you finish the initial writing process and the book is completed so that you begin to edit, is that the first place you go to again re-create it.
3. Why now? Sometimes going back though can be good because it gives you insight into how to move forward. If you answered the first two questions or, decided to ignore the answers, maybe what you want most is a way to get through a difficult passage. The current chapter I am on currently is very emotional and revealing and the strength of all the sentiments may be holding me down and unable to know how to proceed and get through the emotion. Focusing on another area may do just that and give a push or insight on how to progress.
Overall, I think it is common for anyone to want to look backwards in order to move forward. We all learn from our past mistakes, or hope to. This includes characters in a story. Their lives are linear just as ours. If a character is written right they become real to the author and those characters' lives are just like ours where they have ambitions and contentions and life stories to overcome. Maybe it is best then to not look back until you get to the end and the true editing process begins. I think we all have a bit of Lot's wife in us though...we yearn to look back at what we know and not forward to what we don't even if we know it will turn us into a pillar of salt.
The other day when I was thinking of my writing though I started to envision, not the continuation of the story and where I had left it off, but rather a new beginning. I started to re-write the beginning with the idea that it would flow better with the story line which may be true but it got me to wondering when we look back to what we have written because we are stuck and can not move forward where we are in our current writing. I think in life everyone does this. They are scared to move forward or don't know what the next step will be and so it is easy to fall back to the past as a comfort because it is done and completed and the results already proven.
The problem with not moving forward with the story and going back to the beginning is that it is easy to convince yourself that you are just editing or re-editing so that the work can flow better. In reality you are re-writing and then the inevitable feeling that the story has become too chaotic and unfocused. You want to move forward with Chapter Twenty-Five (as in my case) but the only thing you are thinking about is the beginning and re-writing it.
Stop! Breathe! Then ask yourself these questions:
1. Is this really necessary now or am I avoiding a difficult passage by re-creating an old one?
2. Will it add value to the story? If you are going to return to the beginning and re-write entire passages before you are ready to edit the book fully is it because you know it will add value to the story. Think carefully because when you finish the initial writing process and the book is completed so that you begin to edit, is that the first place you go to again re-create it.
3. Why now? Sometimes going back though can be good because it gives you insight into how to move forward. If you answered the first two questions or, decided to ignore the answers, maybe what you want most is a way to get through a difficult passage. The current chapter I am on currently is very emotional and revealing and the strength of all the sentiments may be holding me down and unable to know how to proceed and get through the emotion. Focusing on another area may do just that and give a push or insight on how to progress.
Overall, I think it is common for anyone to want to look backwards in order to move forward. We all learn from our past mistakes, or hope to. This includes characters in a story. Their lives are linear just as ours. If a character is written right they become real to the author and those characters' lives are just like ours where they have ambitions and contentions and life stories to overcome. Maybe it is best then to not look back until you get to the end and the true editing process begins. I think we all have a bit of Lot's wife in us though...we yearn to look back at what we know and not forward to what we don't even if we know it will turn us into a pillar of salt.
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