A new year is upon us, and as Ben Franklin once said, “You may delay, but time will not.”
My husband, being a sailor, puts it a bit differently when he quotes the old saying: “Time and tide wait for no man” – or woman, he is fond of reminding me.
So now, if you have taken my kindly advice for December, you have had some rest from your writing projects and enjoyed the holiday season. You are, I hope, refreshed and excited to get on with your work. Maybe even start a new project. What better way to begin the new year?
But then reality sets in, and your enthusiasm hits a giant wall.
There are many reasons why writers may fall victim to procrastination, but even for those who manage to conquer fear of failure, lack of time, and other excuses we creative types are so fond of conjuring up, there still looms the sheer size—the depth and breadth—of the project itself to consider.
Several literary professionals have suggested what I once heard a motivational trainer call “eating the elephant one bite at a time.”
Don’t try to do everything at once. Don’t even think about how intimidating the entire project is, or you’ll be overwhelmed.
Five-time New York Times best-selling author SARK uses what she calls the Micro Movement Miracle Method to get her writing done.
“It’s an ignition system,” she says, “a way to get started,” adding that research has shown that once people get started on doing something, 60% of the time they will keep going.
“Just think of it as ‘I only have to do this for five minutes’—or even three minutes.”
If you really hate doing it at that time and can’t wait to quit, she says, “then that’s not your day to keep going. But 60% of the time you will. That’s how I got all of my books done.”
You don’t have to write an entire chapter, or even an entire scene, at one sitting. If you’ve thought of a snippet of dialogue or are enraptured with describing a certain setting, write it down. You don’t have to write your story in chronological order.
Many writers strongly advise writing the entire first draft all the way through before thinking about refining or editing your story, and that is no doubt sound advice, but some tactics work better for some writers and other tactics for others.
If you are procrastinating getting back to, or even beginning, your story because you’re not sure what is supposed to happen at that point, then perhaps it would free your imagination to jump ahead to some scene you plan to include that you feel more comfortable with (or more excited about) and write that scene now. You can always come back to earlier story elements later. That place in the story where you felt stuck will still be there waiting for you when you are finally ready to tackle it, and that may come sooner than you think once you get your creative juices flowing.
And if you need something other than the story itself to get those juices flowing, why not try writing a poem, a character sketch, a bit of flash fiction? Just think of it as an appetizer preceding the entrée. (That, of course, would be the elephant.)
[AUTHOR NOTE: No elephants were eaten or harmed in any way during the writing of this article.]
© 2019 Ann Henry, all rights reserved.
Photo: Procrastination Rules © 2018 Ann Henry, all rights reserved.