
“If you want to make an easy job seem mighty hard, just keep putting off doing it.” ~ Olin Miller
I know the reasons for writing regularly, for being patient through multiple drafts, for just showing up day after day. I haven’t developed a long-term butt glue to keep my fanny fastened to the fiction writer’s chair yet, but I’m trying. I can do discipline; haven’t I held down full-time jobs for the past 26 years, despite longing to stay up late and sleep later every day? So why do I keep permitting roadblocks in my writing path?
Recently, I thought a writing partner would keep me on track. Like diet buddies, we’d check each other’s progress. Then I went through a few weeks of serious illness, he and his family bought a house, my family struggled with making our high school senior study enough to graduate, I fell behind at work, and our fledgling writers’ relationship faded away. And while he was a good writing partner and I feel embarrassed that I failed to be one, I think that maybe a writing buddy wasn’t the right solution for me; self doubt paralyzed me when I showed my early drafts to someone. I need a different way to stay on the path.
After all, I’ve been “writing a murder mystery” for two years now. But real writing time? Maybe a month.
Then I read a RockYourDay blog post last week with a key concept that resonated for me: “Don’t confuse lack of progress in overcoming a habit with the actual difficulty of doing it. If you’re not making progress, it’s likely that it’s because you aren’t deciding up front to anticipate obstacles and so you’re not planning your way around it.” [Emphasis mine.]
Wow. Just … wow. So I’ve been thinking about where my time goes:
- Sleeping, especially long, long naps. I’m taking prescription iron medicine for anemia, and that helps. And for a lingering kidney infection I’m taking a strong new antibiotic that has a powerful drowsiness side effect for me, which doesn’t help. Solution: Get well, and (the hard part) keep more regular hours to help me distinguish between real fatigue and medicine-induced sleepiness I can sometimes push on through. I HATE regular hours, though; I love staying up late or getting up early on my own whim. Still thinking hard about this one.
- Blog surfing. Err, with a blogroll of nearly 300 strong, I definitely need to trim. By AT LEAST one third, and preferably two thirds. I spent the better part of an entire day this weekend just trying (and failing) to catch up on reading a backlog of blog posts. Solution: Trim the blogroll. Again, a solution I dread; I love them all and love to find new ones. I keep thinking that faster skimming will help but it doesn’t. And I’m spending way too much time on reading — or clipping to read in the “later” that never comes. I’ve gotta trim again.
- Obsessing over useless things. When I should be pulling out my story board and tackling one of my mapped-out scenes, I’m instead sorting my sock drawer or alphabetizing my science fiction book shelves by author. Or I’m making lists that are related to my writing, without actually being my writing. Solution: Set aside time to do lower-priority tasks so they don’t crowd my writing time. Every time has a task, and every task has a time.
I’m sure there are more, but those are the ones that loom for me. I’ll tackle them first and then study my action plan again: Where is blocking my free time from flowing to my writing, and how can I avoid the blockage?
What are YOUR fiction-writing obstacles, and how are you planning to overcome every way they manifest for you?
Photo credit: Mozambique - Moments
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