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Posts tagged ‘procrastination’

Oct 8

5 Comments

Cathy: The Next Big Thing

crossposting from musings in mayhem

Why is it even when I have several projects I could be working on, narrowed to two that I am working on (read procrastinating) that I generally have at least part of my writer’s eye on The Next Big Thing?

This is also true in the home improvement arena, you should see what I’ve come up with for the addition now that we are paying a mortgage and have a yard of our own rather than renting a condo.

I mean I could also be focusing on getting those wonderfully folded piles from last week into dressers before starting this week’s loads. But I’m already a day late anyway, and have no earthly idea how it is that I wash the same five outfits per family member twice a week and there are still piles of folded and sorted laundry sitting from two weeks ago.

I’m planning next spring’s gardens while the plots are currently filled and continuing to fill with weeds. I really need to buy more sand to add to my clay soil which needs to be turned and covered, with compost, too, before I start plotting next year.

I am also dreaming baby names, when I know, logistics and physicality have set in stone that C is the last of my progeny. I am thinking of new baby names instead of being present with the three kids I have now.

I can use the baby names for characters, but that is the only technical resolve I have for this dilemma I have that the next thing is better than the present. It’s sparklier, it’s as tempting as a dessert sitting on the counter while I’m preparing dinner.

Something about the new, the imagined, the dreamed is much easier because I can keep my hands clean thinking about it while the dirty work of the present is a constant.

Maybe I just have trouble with finishing, with letting go, with saying finally, for the last time, that this version of the poem, the children’s novel, the article is good enough just the way it is.

I’m sure there is a psychological disorder with a big fancy name for this. It has conveniently slipped my mind.

Mar 9

6 Comments

When what you want to do most is write–and what you want to do least is write

When it seems like you’ll do anything and everything rather than show up at the page, turn to Jerry Oltion’s 50 Strategies for Making Yourself Work. His piece is full of gems. Here’s the intro:

Work avoidance is one of the major paradoxes of the writing profession. Generally, writers want to write (or want to have written), but all too often we find ourselves doing anything else but. We’ll mow lawns, do the dishes, polish silverware–anything to keep from facing the blank page. At the same time we know we eventually have to get to work, so we come up with all sorts of strategies for forcing ourselves to the keyboard.

Read Oltion’s stragies and the full peice here. Then, get to work!

Nov 20

6 Comments

Judge a book by its cover

judgebyNot that any of us needs another way to waste time online (ahem), but I can’t help but share Judge By. Go to the site and you’ll see a random book cover from Amazon.com. Guess how good you think the book is, based on its cover. After you click your assessment, you’ll see what Amazon reviewers actually rated it. You can also click through to the book on Amazon, in the event that you stumble across something interesting. Quite addictive…

Oct 7

14 Comments

Cathy: 24 ways to avoid your manuscript

Distractions after announcement of finding the creative groove:

  1. Joined Obama campaign as a volunteer.
  2. Sleep deprivation from Baby C, even though we started her on foods very successfully.
  3. Now, if she’d only poop a good one. It’s been days. Poopwatch.
  4. Wrote a letter of recommendation for a friend’s aspie son to get into a good private school, since he’s having such a hard time in public and homeschooling combo.
  5. Baby C’s wellness visit and wait in the lobby for popular Dr B. who really takes the tiiiiiime with aaaaaall his patients.
  6. Mom time hair appointment — 2.5 glorious hours talking the ear off my young stylist with no kids and flipping through vapid fashion magazines.
  7. Take S to Taekwando, sit there 2x per week to help redirect him to stay focused.
  8. Obama Rally, need I say more?
  9. Sleep deprivation from the Red Sox in the playoffs. Hate that 12th inning stretch.
  10. Take K to his own hair appointment, same stylist, poor thing. The stylist, I mean.
  11. Then take him to a birthday party movie sleepover while:
  12. He tells me about how he’s waiting to hear if he has a girlfriend. GIRLFRIEND?!
  13. And by the way, thanks mom, my new haircut makes me look sexy  SEXY?!
  14. Mom. Mom, mom, mom,mom,mom,mom, mom.
  15. Take S out to decommissioned air and space craft park since he missed out on the rally.
  16. Got my period for the first time since July 2007. Ain’t pregnancy and nursing grand?
  17. Must bake cookies and eat even more sugar. And pasta. Lots of pasta.
  18. Walk the dog. Throwing that one in for good measure.
  19. Break up sibling fights.
  20. Laundry, always laundry
  21. Cooking. Or getting dh to cook, really I should just take care of it myself. But I’m nursing. See?
  22. Did I miss anything?
  23. Oh yeah, new tv season. Sucked in to the new episodes of Oprah, Ellen and what’s on tonight?  Dancing with the Stars. Oh, I really hate myself now!
  24. Facebook.

Now that’s out of the way, I hope I can write this week! Good luck to the rest of you in your creative endeavors!

Aug 14

10 Comments

Cathy: Prior complaints

love me

Love me, love my mess! And Jen Johnson's Baby Friendly Beads, too! Know how I'm always saying paper org on the Monday Page? Check out the box behind me.

After my prior complaints of not feeling like I am writing enough and my excuses-disguised-as-reasons blogs, I took a couple of pages from Christa Miller’s comments and Suzanne Kamata’s Breakfast interview. I squeezed in a little writing in my novel this week. Granted, it was a little, and I hope a little more today. Baby C was post-nursing soundly sleeping on my lap, and my back was achingly curved toward the keyboard, but I wrote. Exactly as I am doing now.

When Suzanne mentioned that her most creatively productive time of her life came after she had her twins who came bundled up with lots besides being twins, I realized I had to get moving. When Christa said:

I think it’s very limiting to say one “can’t” write a novel in stolen minutes outside tap class. Every time someone says I “can’t” I say, “Oh yeah??” OK, so maybe you can’t WRITE A NOVEL that way… but you can draft scenes. You can outline. You can brainstorm characters. All of it counts.

I drank from her dare-me spirit. Somewhere this week I began to feel if I don’t write now, when will I? Baby C will be graduating from high school when I’m 60 years old. Do I start taking myself seriously about the writing and publishing then? Will I even be around that long? I’ve learned to live in the now so much, especially because of and from aspie S, that I put off an entire lifetime of predictions and goals or the working toward them until I have “me” time. Well, guess what. My boys have been out of town for over three weeks, and what have I done? Not nearly what I thought. The time slipped away from me with so much openness about it. I’m such a procrastinating dreamer. Well if I think about it, isn’t that writing, too?

So I hunkered down. I remembered a movie I love in which Stanley Tucci’s character befriends a ‘great writer’ played by Ian Holm. It’s called Joe Gould’s Secret. If you haven’t seen the movie, my apologies but here’s the spoiler: his secret was he never wrote the book he talked about for years, decades. He died incomplete.

I don’t want to die incomplete. I want to finish this youth novel. I want to finish other projects: a couple of screenplays, another novel, organize a lifetime of poems into submissions and slim volumes. I don’t want all to be said of me at my funeral is that I was a devoted mother. Oh, I want that, too, but I have so much more to say now and I don’t want to take my time for granted anymore. Ok, it’s time to get back to the book. Please, Baby C, stay asleep just a little while longer.

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