Procrastination and that.

Isn’t it a weird spring?  The snow is blowing past the window, the sky is grey, and the burst of fresh green we are supposed to be witnessing is being held in check by the frozen ground.  Apparently the cause of this is easterly winds.  It’s not actually the coldest March on record; but it’s not far off.

One side effect of this is I am still in winter mode, a time I spend in semi-hibernation.  I hate dark grey days (I don’t actually mind the cold if it’s sunny with it), and it’s amazing how much more I’ll get done on a day when it’s sunny than I do on a rainy day.

This week has been a struggle.  I hit a wall with my novel, and no matter what way I came at it, I was stuck.  I sat at my computer and stared at it.  Nothing happened.  I tried scribbling in my notepad.  I got a very nice doodle of a dragon, but no further on the plot.  I tried just bashing out words in a stream of consciousness, but that just gave me a garbled winding story that didn’t really have a lot to do with the characters or moving the story forward.

Then the answer came in two parts.

Part 1: Asking for help.

This is something I am terrible at.  It was written into one of my school reports once that I would struggle through something on my own rather than ask for help, and unfortunately it’s something I’ve not improved on.  So I can’t exactly say I asked for help; rather it was offered and it turned out that I did need it.  Talking through what I was stuck on made me realise what had been bothering me about the story, and what I needed to change to move forward.

Part 2:  Procrastination. 

Yes, really!  Yesterday I read a very interesting article about how procrastination is not necessarily a bad thing for a creative type person.  (Funnily enough, I read this in a random magazine supplement out of a week old newspaper that I don’t normally read, and was only reading because I was procrastinating.) 

It has always been assumed that if you are procrastinating, you aren’t getting anything done.  However now people are beginning to recognise that if you are procrastinating, you are getting something done; not necessarily the thing you are supposed to be doing, but you are completing something none the less. 

So I looked back at my week and I noticed all of the things that I have done when I should have been getting thousands of words written.  I’ve cleaned the house.  I’ve done my banking.  I finished reading “The Two Towers” and started on “The Return of the King.”  And suddenly I don’t feel bad about it.

This is why: because firstly, I realise that I haven’t “not got anything done” this week.  Secondly as soon as I let go of the “I should be doing this” and just started to enjoy what I was doing, the words came back.  I’ve had to go back and rewrite several pages, but I’m progressing again.

 

I may have been going in circles all week, but the circles were getting bigger and I’ve found myself on the other side of the wall.  Instead of punching through it, I just went around it.  I’m about to start another circle now, since I’ve gone back about twenty pages to slightly change the direction my characters are going in, but I’m ok with that, because this circle is going to be even bigger than the last and at the end of this one the final stages of the tale will be in sight.

But first, I’m off to have some lunch. J  

It was merely a setback!

So I imagined this week I’d be saying how my Sci-Fi story collection was nicely second drafted.  But it isn’t.

My editor (paid in chocolate/coffee) read through the last story to be reviewed, got half way through, and came to the conclusion that it didn’t live up to the standard of the other stories.

This didn’t upset me; in a way I was relieved.  You see the thing was, I knew it wasn’t good enough, before I’d even handed it over to be read.  I wanted to be told to keep that one out.  Why didn’t I make the call myself?  Perhaps a lack of confidence.

Would I be able to write a better story?
What if I’d run out of ideas?

What if I’d been deluding myself and all the stories weren’t good enough? 

I spent the next two days thinking.

Strangely that is one of the toughest parts of being an author.  You can spend hours or days, sitting, walking, doodling, making a drink, getting a snack, staring into space… and to the whole world it looks like you aren’t doing anything at all.

It sounds very lame when at the end of the day someone asks how it went, and you reply:

“Good.  I thought about a lot of stuff.”

The world values the physical, and if you don’t have something to show at the end of the day, you don’t really have a mark of progress.  I went through a stage of feeling worried and guilty that I wouldn’t have anything to show by the end of this week, that it would be a “wasted” week. 

Looking back on it, I can now see it’s been a valuable week.  I’ve learned a good lesson on how to deal with a setback, and maybe gained a little confidence too.

No one was angry that I’d been delayed in my plan.  I did get some new ideas.  I started writing one, it’s going well, and I’m enjoying it.  I can say with certainty that the final product will be as good as I can make it – and a bar to beat for my future endeavours. 

Writer’s block.

This is something every writer has to contend with at some point.  It’s not a lack of ideas, but struggling at how to put them on a page.

It’s like when you imagine the awesome cake you are going to bake, and then find out you have no icing sugar and the shop is closed.  Now what are you going to do?

Well you could give up on the cake.  Or you could look up how to make icing sugar on the net, throw caster sugar and cornflour into a food processor and walla! Improvised icing sugar. 

Ok so it turned out a bit floury and gritty, but hey, at least I tried.

Oh yeah, this post was about writing wasn’t it?

Well, I find one of the best ways to get over writer’s block is to just write.  Grab a pad and stream of consciousness write down anything and everything.  Eventually something will click.

Another exercise I read about was to go away and describe something.  Anything.  Like eating a nut.  What does it smell like?  What is it like as you bite into it?  How does it feel on your tongue?  What about when you chew it?

Sometimes it gets those words flowing again.  Sometimes you just get to eat a nut, which is a nice anyway.  (Unless you have a nut allergy, in which case, don’t do that.)

So this week I got another story for the sci fi collection first drafted.  I am both looking forward to, and dreading reading them back.  Sometimes things that made perfect sense when you were typing them become complete gibberish when you read them a week later.  Fingers crossed there won’t be too much of that!  I guess we’ll see how that goes next week!  

In the meantime, I’ve added a new link to the resources page, from those masters of storytelling, Pixar.  Enjoy!