Making procrastination an artform

Why am I here? I shouldn’t be here. Not now. Not with two deadlines facing me – and both worth $$ to me. But instead of knuckling down, I’ve been caught up in administrivia all morning.

Yes, you have to do this stuff when you run a business (and a household), but it helps to actually earn money, rather than just let deadlines whoosh past.

Administrivia is just another word for procrastination. And I’ve made it an artform. Because it’s easier to fuddle around paying bills, and sorting emails, and stuff than it is to face the blank page. And hey, while I’m at it, I’ll put on a load of washing and clean the kitchen (gotta love the home office!).

I sometimes wonder why I write for a living, and for recreation. Clearly, I’m a sucker for punishment – or I just love playing with words.

So I’ve eliminated all my excuses so far. I’ve done the admin, done the washing, even paid for my ticket to the Byron Bay Writers Festival next month. Now…it’s almost midday. It must be time to face my copywriting jobs. Wish me luck!

elle x

Brewing the perfect novel

The draft is finished. 763,000 cups of tea later… the draft is finally finished.

And it’s a good thing I procrastinated over so many cups of tea, because now is the moment when all that ‘brewing’ experience pays off. Now I get to sit and wait, while my manuscript brews and my mind clears. Ready to transform this thing into a final work.

The Fragrant Leafsays brewing is simple and straightforward. (If only it was!) They even outline some simple steps to show how simple brewing is.

1. Start with fresh, cold good-tasting water - I have fresh, crisp good-sounding words. I must be on the right track.

2. Preheat the teapot - Hey, this story is positively smoking. It’s got action, it’s got pace, and characters that leap from the page. (Okay, so sometimes they have arthritic knees and it’s not so graceful. It’s still hot.)

3. Measure the appropriate amount of dry leaves - Dry leaves? Ah, yes. Those moments where we allow the reader to come up for air, and take a break from it all. I’m sure I’ve got an appropriate amount of those. 

4. Select the right water temperature - Still treading water in the shallow end of the writers’ pool. Time to dive in the deep end I think. 

5. Steep for the proper length of time - The crux of the whole brewing thing. Normally I’d let it steep for a month, but who can wait that long these days? Besides, I’m on a time budget here and I’m not getting any younger either. I’m thinking a week. One week. Seven days. And it’s liberating not to think about my novel every spare second. And it kind of leaves me lost at the same time. What did I think about before I started writing this thing? 

Never mind. A week it is. I haven’t looked at it since Friday, so that means tomorrow my week is up. Oh no, that went so fast. I can feel the tension rising already. 

Urgh! 

I think I’d better go make a cup of tea. 

Sash.

Second draft in progress

…but are you using the cut and paste keys a little too much? I’m bang smack in the middle of my (official) second draft, so I really related to screenwriter John Pace’s post at The Story Department.

He has some pretty wild ideas to avoid taking the lazy way out, or as he puts it: “…we need to muster the courage to kill our babies, not copy and paste them into another family.”

At an author’s lunch some years ago, author of Shantaram Gregory David Roberts told us he’d (and I’m factual-recall challenged, so I’ll have to be vague!) completely lost at least the first entire draft of his novel or had it taken by prison guards. By the time he wrote the second draft, he really knew his characters and his story! And the results speak for themselves.

An interesting concept. Okay, I’m not taping electrodes to anything or popping into the prison for some quiet writing time, but I do get the point! No cutting and pasting. Aaagh!

elle x

3 secrets for copywriters and marketers

If you’re balking at getting into social media…just do it! There’s literally millions of people out there blogging and twittering away, and sharing great info, insights and experiences.

It’s become an excellent filtering system, with your ‘community’ leading you to the really good stuff.

For example, yesterday I took half an hour out of my day to browse through some of my favourite bloggers. Something always catches my eye and gives me the nudge I need!

Like this great article from Gary Bencivenga (one of his fabulous Bencivenga Bullets): 3 Secrets for Multiplying Your Productivity, Success, Income, and Personal Happiness as a Copywriter or Marketer.

Those three ’secrets’ are great stuff. I especially like the 80/20 rule, which I’ve heard a lot about but never really looked into it. 

But wait…there’s (so much) more! So dive in and enjoy!

elle

The writers’ lunch

Solving the fly problem, writer style!

There’s something a bit decadent about stealing a few hours for yourself – and your writing buddy. Sash and I do it (almost) every Tuesday, and it’s brilliant.

It took us a while to set aside that time to feed our creative souls – and we still feel a tiny bit guilty that we’re not generating an income sitting there!

Is it a woman thing? We’re so used to looking out for everyone else’s needs and being on-call 24/7, that taking time out for ourselves takes enormous determination.

And we both know, from our own experience and talking to so many fellow writers, that it’s why we feel we shouldn’t take the time to write.

I love what Louise Doughty says in her book A Novel in a Year:

“The problem…with getting started seemed to stem from a common need, the desire for someone else to give them permission to go ahead with an activity that neither settles the bills nor involves paying attention to those we love.

…Hell will freeze over before I spend a morning folding clothes and putting them away in drawers when I need to be writing instead. If my family want their clothes, they know to look on the laundry rack.”

Don’t you love it when someone makes such perfect sense?

Our Tuesday Collabs start with a Pilates session, then coffee and fabulous GF banana bread at our favourite cafe in West End. Or, like today, lunch.

We spend the time catching up, planning or doing our next collaborative writing project, talking about the manuscripts we’re working on… So far this year, we’ve written a short film script, made serious progress on our manuscripts, and come up with some fun writing plans (and dreams).

Today, a fly flew into Sash’s shiraz. I’m not sure if that’s a sign – but it involved laughter, so it must have been.

We solved the fly problem, writer style – with our coasters and pens. And we’re so busy being creative and motivated, there’s really not much time left, these days, for guilt trips.

elle & sash

5 things I hate about goals

Hands up who set themselves fabulous New Year’s Resolutions - and promptly broke most of them within a month. And hands up who cringes when the self-help gurus go on (and on and on) about goal setting. Here are five things I hate about goals…

#1. Are you dreaming?

It’s too easy to get mixed up between dreams and goals. My dream is to be a prolific and published author. My goal is to finish my first novel. A goal is something solid. Something you can work towards.

Remember that stuff about it being great to build castles in the air… now you’ve got to put legs under it? The dream is the castle, the goals are the legs. Okay, I’m sure I’ve done something hideous with the metaphor, but you get my point.

#2. For goals, read guilt…

It’s sooo easy to set up lovely long-term goals and all the short-term goals that lead up to them. But those ‘little’ goals usually involve things like meditating, writing 1000 words, then going for a run. Every morning. All before breakfast. Meanwhile, our families will become magically self-managing, and we will sail into the rest of our day feeling calm and unflappable.

Like hell. We’re immediately setting ourselves up for a guilt trip. Because there’s nothing like failing to reach a ridiculous goal (or several) for turning ourselves into self-flagellating wrecks.

The only way to avoid the guilt is to be realistic in our goal setting. “Given my busy lifestyle, what can I realistically achieve?” For me, it’s writing for a couple of hours once a week. If I can achieve that, I can usually slip in one or two more quick sessions.

#3. Life is a rollercoaster

So we’ve had a reality check, and we’ve got some goals that fit into our lifestyle. All good. Then the ‘life is a rollercoaster’ thing kicks in, and we lose our way. And then it becomes almost impossible to get back into it.  

It’s like going on a chocolate cake binge when we’ve promised ourselves we’re going to eat healthy – and lose weight. Or attacking the vino with a little too much enthusiasm on our designated alcohol-free day.

…the next time we even think about that goal, we’re going to go ‘nup, look what happened last time. There’s no point in trying’. Even though there actually is. Because every time you get back into it after you’ve failed, you get stronger – and the gaps between the slips get bigger. Which brings me to…

#4. I hear voices…

The minute you set yourself goals, you start hearing voices. Natalie Goldberg calls those voices ‘the Resistance’. Because the minute you set up your goals – whether it’s writing 4000 words a week or dropping a dress size – ‘the Resistance’ kicks in to sneer at you, oppose every move, ‘encourage you’ to give up.

‘You can’t do it. You’ll just sit at the computer and blog.’ (oh!). ‘You’ll never be able to stick to that exercise plan.’ (hmmm). ‘Yeh, right. You. Not eat fatty stuff. Are you kidding?’ (yeh…where’s the triple chocolate icecream?).

So, as Natalie G says, you’ve got to fool the Resistance. Be a bit sneaky. She recommends daily writing practice (which works a bit like a brain dump). For me, it works to tell myself I’m not going to write my novel at all. I’m just going to write a description of (for example) my character.

I usually find myself slipping into writing a scene that shows my character interacting with another character, and what happens. Which often leads to the first draft of a scene for my novel. But the Resistance didn’t notice me doing it.

#5. Sticking (it) to goals

The thing I hate most about goals is that… aaagh… you have to have them. If you don’t, it’s like setting out on a road trip with no destination in mind. Which might be okay if you travel in a hash-cloud. But for most of us, going nowhere fast feels like we’re letting ourselves down.

That’s not to say there won’t be diversions along the way. And that the destination won’t change. Or that we won’t be open to opportunities. What it does mean is that we’ll be putting legs under those castles in the air. Or whatever.

elle