procrastination

The Fears That Bind Us (aka You’re Gonna Die)

April 2, 2015 by Danika 9 Comments

A wise friend of mine once observed:
Every action we take or don’t take is driven by one of two things:
Fear or Love.

I’ve been sifting through this idea for a few years now, wondering if this were actually true (being the “inward bound” workshop/personal development/human potential geek-junkie that I am – and yes, I am the kind of person satirized on shows like Portlandia). But I’ve discovered that whenever I break my actions or inactions down to the basic essence, my wise friend is right. I just have to be brave enough to tell the truth about it once in a while, especially when it comes to the fear end of things. I’m quite good at justifying my fears.

I also think that there are levels of fear, and I can always tell when I get to the fear behind the fear behind the fear (to that essence), because it just goes THUNK when it finally gets to that simple statement of belief I hold. You know, the one that isn’t really serving me.

For example: Even though I say I love to write and share and talk story and writing practice is INVALUABLE, I haven’t blogged for almost two months. I could easily tell myself I just haven’t had time. And I could list all the stuff that’s been going on in my life to enroll everyone in that story.

However, I didn’t really have to watch 3 episodes of Scott and Bailey in a row and then stay up until 2 AM playing Angry Birds feeling guilty and telling myself, Pulitzer Prize author Michael Chabon doesn’t stay up all night playing Angry Birds. (Although I certainly invite him to tell me otherwise.) He’s a real writer. He writes.

And I didn’t have to start at least 8 posts when an idea inspired me, only to finish none of them.

I know procrastination when I see it. And I know procrastination stems from fear. So when I finally broke it down, it went like this:

Why didn’t you finish those posts?
I was afraid I’d lost my momentum on the ideas and they wouldn’t be as good as I thought when I was inspired to start them. (first level of fear, logical enough that I could just brush it away)

But so what if they’re “not as good” as you thought they would be?
I’m afraid that if they’re not very good people will figure out that I’m really a fraud and I’ll lose readers.

First, you’re not a fraud. Second, so what if you lose readers?
I’m afraid if I lose readers I’ll look stupid and people will judge me for that.

So?
Then no one will like me. (I am now 9 years old)

THUNK!

Completely unannounced, Byron Katie’s voice barged in on my thought process and asked me: And WHO would you BE without that?

Who would I be without the fear of people not liking me? If that fear were simply gone from my life, what could I accomplish?

And what is the price to myself if I hold myself back because of this fear?

A few years ago at a SCBWI conference, author Laurie Halse Anderson said that one time when she’d been whining and complaining about some niggling thing to do with her writing, her husband told her: “You know what? You’re gonna die.”

He didn’t say it to be mean. She got it. The things that were holding her back weren’t worth paying attention to in this limited time on the planet we all have. Her fear of not doing those things became greater than her fear of doing them. And sometimes, that’s the place I also need to go to get my motivation back.

On the flip side, the love I feel for what I do when I’m actually doing it, and not trying to be too perfect or precious about it, is also life-fulfilling motivation. And even though fear (and anger) can be incredibly useful procrastination busters, I think “doing” from a space of love is where I’d much rather be.

YOUR WRITING WORKOUT

What is the fear (big or small) that holds your protagonist back? If you look deep enough, what is the essence of the fear? How does she justify her actions/inactions around this fear?

What price to herself for inaction? What will she lose if she does not act? Her freedom? A friendship? A position? A lover? Her self-worth?

And is there a moment when her fear of not having/doing something becomes greater than her fear of doing/having this thing?

TIMED WRITING GUIDELINES
Set your timer for 5 -10 minutes per start line
When timer starts: write, don’t stop, don’t edit, don’t cross out.
(just do it!)

Start lines:

The excuse my character gives him/herself looks like . . .
The fear behind all of my character’s fears tells her . . .
The price of my character’s inaction is . . .
The scene where my character breaks the bonds of this fear happens when . . .

Now write your next scene . . . 🙂

Writing Life: The Secret Project

December 12, 2012 by openchannel 4 Comments

Last week I wrote about going through SPLAT, but before I could face my own personal splat, I had a few questions for it. Like why were my procrastination and resistance so hard core around the rewriting of Book Three?

The answer came to me Sunday morning. Expectations. My own high expectations and the expectations of my publisher, my friends, my family, and my fans. Writing the next book in a series isn’t easier, at least not to me, and for some reason I thought it would be. It’s much harder. There’s an absence of freedom around it due not only to all the expectations, but also the pressure deadlines.

I compared my lack of enthusiasm while writing Book Three to the complete joy I experienced working on my new book Intergalactic. No one, not even myself, had any expectation around Intergalactic. It was a complete experiment. A NaNo even. There were no deadlines but my own, no eyes waiting to tear into it, or tear it apart, it was a secret from the entire world.

I’m not a fan of working on more than one novel at a time, especially in this case. I know Intergalactic could easily steal my attention away from my Book Three rewrite. But I decided to try a little experiment. What if I worked on another kind of writing as a warm-up each day? A creative essay? A poem? A song? A short story? Write for the sheer joy and pleasure of writing, with no strings attached, to get me into my writing mode.

And you know what? It worked! Over the past three days I’ve dabbled in a “secret” creative project, worked on some songs, and drafted a creative essay and was so elated to be doing so that when I turned to my Book Three rewrite, I was in a much happier space.

From that space I knew I could tell this story. I was still creative. I did not forget how to write overnight.

Perhaps you, too, are procrastinating to the page because of your own expectations. Maybe you’re afraid of imperfection, maybe you have a lack of confidence. Whatever the reason, perhaps this little experiment will work for you as well. When you’re up against splat, try warming up by writing creatively in another form just for pleasure, to remember why you write in the first place.

The trick is not to use the “secret project” as an excuse not to work on your novel or to procrastinate even more. What I do is set my timer for 20-40 minutes to warm up with this new idea. If it’s a poem, I might be able to crank out a first draft. If it’s a song, I can jot notes, sing and record the melody on my computer. If it’s a short story or essay, I can make an outline or jump on in with a cannonball splash.

With no expectations, it’s been a great way to start each writing day.

How do you get yourself to the page when you’re up against your own SPLAT?

Practical Procrastination Techniques #3 – Research Random Things on the Internet

July 22, 2010 by openchannel 6 Comments

Because, hey, you never know when a clever turn of phrase, an insignificant fact, or a fleeting moment of genius could help you out of a tight situation. Like an awkward silence at an industry networking party, for instance!

As poet Bernadette Mayer says, if it’s not writing, it’s research.

~ ~ ~

A friend of mine’s facebook status stated that she might be Hexakosioihexekontahexaphobic. Since I absolutely have to know what every word I run across means, I dutifully looked it up (see Practical Procrastination Techniques #2). It means fear of the number 666 (fear that it is related to satan and the anti-christ).

Well, me being the cheeky monkey that I am (and not even stopping to consider that this may be a serious phobia of hers), I attempted to cure her ailment with a bit of Hexakosioihexekontahexaphobic humour. I found most of these online HERE (I didn’t make these up, I stole them with glee).

670 Approximated Number of the Beast

DCLXVI Roman Numeral of the Beast

333 Number of the Semi-Beast

66 Number of the Downsized Beast

0.666 Number of the Millibeast

-666 Opposite of the Beast

25.8069758… Square Root of the Beast

1010011010 Binary Number of the Beast

00666 Zip Code of the Beast

www.666.com Website of the Beast

1-666-666-6666 Phone or FAX Number of the Beast

(1-888-666-6666 Toll Free Number of the Beast)

1-900-666-6666 Live Beasts, available now! One-on-one pacts! Only $6.66 per minute! [Must be over 18!]

666-66-6666 Social Security Number of the Beast

Form 10666 Special IRS Tax Form for the Beast

66.6% Tax Rate of the Beast

6.66% 6-Year CD Interest Rate at First Beast Bank of Hell ($666 minimum deposit, $666 early withdrawal fee)

$665.95 Retail Price of the Beast

$769.95 Price of the Beast with accessories and replacement soul

$656.66 Wal-Mart Price of the Beast (next week $646.66!)

$55.50 Monthly Payments for Beast, in 12 easy installments

666o F Oven Temperature for Cooking “Roast Beast”

666 mg Recommended Minimum Daily Requirement of Beast

Word 6.66 Word Processor of the Beast

#666666 Font Color of the Beast (the gray in this table!)

IAM 666 License Plate Number of the Beast

66.6 MHz FM Radio Station of the Beast

666 KHz AM Radio Station of the Beast

okay, now, back to work!

Getting There – Procrastinationville

May 13, 2010 by openchannel 5 Comments

My evil genius procrastination has whispered me to tarry ’til a more convenient season.
~Mary Todd Lincoln

So does Carolyn See really write 1,000 words a day, five days a week? Or does Stephen King really write 10 pages every single day? I’m not sure. I know they are prolific writers, but I tend to believe that there are breaks. What I call “transitions” and what poet Bernadette Mayer calls “research.” (once when we were taking a tour of a brewery in Plzen, she told me that anything that is not writing is research)

Perhaps while in the middle of a story, an edit, a brainstorm, a treatment they are going full speed. But I bet they probably have those challenging times when getting there is as difficult as it is for the rest of us.

Approaching the work has always been the most challenging point for me. It’s when I have to really force myself to stay disciplined. That discipline usually doesn’t happen right away, though. I’m most challenged when I’m approaching something new. I resist a second time when I have to edit the work. It’s less challenging with each passing edit. And even when I’m in the thick of a story, there’s still a little bit of resistance every day.

What is that? Where does that come from?

I’ve heard that perfectionism is a form of procrastination. And perhaps I fear putting something on the page because it won’t be as perfect as it is in my head. So I have to remind myself over and over again that Creation is Messy and that I need to just lay it all out there to see what I’ve got.

The challenge I’m having right now is getting into the editing of the 1st draft of The Ruins of Noe, which is the second book in my White Forest series. I wrote it over a year ago and haven’t looked at it since. I’ve been working on other projects, but now that Brigitta is being released, the time has come to face it!

I think I’m afraid to read the draft because it might suck. Lol. Perhaps it was simply a fluke that I wrote the first novel. Anyone could have that happy accident, right? I mean, how can I possibly think I could do it again. And make it better, or at least just as good.

Don’t worry, I’m going to get to the edit. I’m just acknowledging all that’s going on in my head. I can only resist for so long before I get twitchy. The odd thing is that I know, I KNOW, that as soon as I get back into it I’ll get lost inside the story, care deeply about what happens to the characters, and be taken away on a magical journey.

It’s just the getting there.