Posts Tagged ‘goal setting’


Posted on September 4, 2012 - by

What is Your Game Plan?

No, really. What is it? Don’t you have a routine in the morning? Coffee first, lots of sugar, and cream? A favorite mug you always take, but only after you’ve rinsed it, even though you washed it the night before?

Routines make us feel safe, organized and in control. So I suggest you get a writing routine now! You’ll accomplish more with it than you ever did without it.

Originally posted 2010-02-24 19:54:00. Republished by Blog Post Promoter


Posted on September 4, 2012 - by

My Rambling Post on Procrastination

Oooo how I love to procrastinate! There’s something so addictive about the adrenaline rush of getting your ish together at the last minute that I don’t know if I’ll ever completely eradicate it.

I can spend ooodles and ooodles of times reading my favorite blogs when I should really be a) walking the dog, b) finishing my novel already, c) getting ready for work, d) cooking dinner, e) finishing my novel already, f) cooking breakfast, g) making a follow up call for one thing or another, or h) finishing my damn novel already. Oh and this blog.

Reasons for Procrastination

Other than those time sucking activities there are other reasons I so easily fall into the comforting grasp of procrastination. And one of them is I have no idea what the hell is going on in my novel. Plot? What’s that? I had a premise, some characters and a few vivid scenes that kept repeating themselves over and over again. I thought I had a plot but whenever I wrote, something else came out. I think all the time “What the hell was I thinking? This is not easy worth a DARN!” (I’ll talk about this more in the next post.)

I need self-discipline to actually set aside time to do the thing. After that I need to get through the monkey mind that goes something like this:

Monkey Mind- “What are you going to write about?”

Me- “I don’t know.”

After that short internal conversation I just stick with what’s comfortable and not write anything. It feels safe to not push myself. Rarely, I get over my contentment and actually bust out a few pages worth.

What’s worse is I how I don’t reward myself. I feel like  saying “whew! I just did it and it feels like I just completed a grain of sand in the process of making a beach. Great, a couple a million of these and I’ll have my novel finished.”

There doesn’t seem to be an end in sight.

What’s Wrong With this Picture?

I have no game plan, no way of breaking down this behemoth endeavor. All I do is write whenever the muse knocks me upside down my head and drags me to her lair like a caveman.

So I’ve come up with A Page a Day Plan. Just a page. It’s a little bit cheating because I have several notebooks of varying size. One page in my smaller memo pad won’t be much. But, hey this is me we’re talking about and this plan has leeway which is what I need. I always travel with a notebook of some kind. A small one for my small bag, my big honking one for my big bag. The point is I’ll always have something on me. When these pages fill up, I can see just how far my novel is doing.

Type It Up

Now all I have to do is to type these bad boys up so my novel can really take shape. Those other blogs are always talking about some software that’ll really help, but I say what the hell’s wrong the MS Word I already paid for? I understand the whole tools that can really develop you, but really. Really. I have MS Word. I type words, they spell check for me. I am not sure what other things I need this early in the game. I haven’t even finished my first draft yet!

What was this post supposed to be about again? Oh yeah, procrastination? Well yeah, these are the reasons why I am so prone to procrastinate: I don’t know what the hell is going on. Not writing is well within my safety zone, and I have no game plan. And I’ am an Aries, we are good for starting projects but not finishing them.

And when all else fails, I do something else that really needs to be done. Do my taxes to avoid writing that novel. Read all the items in Google Reader. Clean up my home. Knock out some things in that To Do List that’s been sitting around forever like putting those loose lying photos into albums.

By the time you actually finish that novel your other affairs should be in order too. And that would be Awesome!

Originally posted 2010-02-11 18:38:51. Republished by Blog Post Promoter


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