Procrastination sux or does it?

"When the student is ready, the master appears"



I love the expression above because it can mean so many things.  The universe provides just when we need it, or when we are willing and ready to accept it.  Sometimes the answer to whatever worries us is in front of us all the time, and while we constantly think it eludes us, we find that it's not until we are ready to acknowledge the lesson, does it all become clear, and we knew the answer all along.  Hindsight is a wonderful thing :)

Which leads me to proscrastination.  In particular procrastination around writing.  Why do we procrastinate or more to the point why do I proscratinate?  Is it because I suck at writing and will do anything to get away from it because I fear failure or success?  Not entirely sure. Sometimes I procrastinate because I'm also a perfectionist (this is a constant work in progress) If you knew me a few years ago you will notice that I have lightened up a lot on that but still perfectionism taps me on the shoulder from time to time letting me know what I've written just isn't quite good enough.

 

Procrastination and perfectionism usually go hand in hand.  Perfectionists and expectation can hound you if something is not quite finished: that half finished novel still sitting in your bottom drawer or that short story that needs the end fixing - it keeps us feeling not quite good enough and if only we worked harder it would be a better story.  Aah, the eternal striving for perfectionism. 

And watching tele isn't procrastinating either is it? It's research! So is surfing the net, reading other writerly blogs, updating your website - it's all research!  I'm quite serious - it is, but it must have its place and the one thing I come back to time and time again is one of the things I learned at Clarion South 2007 from Rob Hood.  "Take one sentence at a time and the next thing you know you have a paragraph."  So why do I continually procrastinate?  Am I lazy, incompetent?

BTW this blog is not going to have any useful tips on how not to procrastinate because I haven't quite figured all that out yet - but one thing I do know for sure is this: 

When I sat down today to look at my rather sad looking play and stared at the blank page for I don't know how long - maybe two minutes, and then I wrote a sentence, then a paragraph and the next thing I knew it was six pages and 1300 words later!  It could all be shite but I don't care, I can fix that up later because this way whatever those words are, I'm that much closer to finishing the play...which is a darn sight closer than it was this morning.  And if I continue to write a sentence tomorrow and the day after that and the day after that - I will finish this play. 

I know I'm the kind of writer who needs to write every day, even if it is that one sentence.  I know I MUST write every day.  If I don't - I procrastinate and I prioritise other things over my writing.  I don't make my writing the priority and if I don't make the priority then I'm not allowing myself the self worth I deserve.  I'm a writer and writers write.  When I continually procrastinate the student is not ready - I know this.  I know this because when I ignore all that other stuff and just write above all else, the master appears.

How do you deal with your procrastination?  I would love to hear from you, hear your tips or simply share. If there is one tip we can come away with from hearing others stories, something that will resonate with us, then we're one step closer to finishing what we started.

The art of writing is the art of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair.
~Mary Heaton Vorse~

Midnight rambler looking forward to what tomorrow's sentence will bring...