How do you get yourself actually writing?

[littlebutfierce]

OK, folks, help me (& your other comm members!) out here. I'm sure many of us are masters of the art of procrastination.

How do you get yourself to actually sit down & write? Internet blockers (or maybe even -- shudder -- going offline entirely)? Bribing yourself? Getting other people to nag/threaten you? Signing up for challenges?

I write something every day using 750 Words; I've posted before about what a good tool this is for me. Sometimes it works brilliantly, as both a way to get words down on the page & sneak past my internal censor. But often I don't write fic there; I'll just brain-dump. Which is good -- it's still writing -- but I feel like I need to kickstart my word count for fic.

Things I have done today instead of opening up a file to work on fic: updated my reading journal w/what I've read lately; updated another comm; answered DW comments; signed up for Diaspora; took down last year's calendars & put up this year's; put up random things I've had around the house to put on the walls but have been lying around for ages; made tea.

And now, my latest avoidance technique: posting here!

My word count is begging you for help. What are your tips? What have you tried that didn't work for you? (It might work for someone else!)

& just for LOLs, what are your favorite things to do when you're resisting sitting down & actually writing?

Comments

[charamei]

I commute! XD And the only things I have in my bag to entertain me on the train are two notebooks, one for whatever I'm working on and the other for random writings.

Other things that work... I just got myself through this editing session with a combination of 'when I finish Chapter Two I get to take a break' and, as things became more pressing, 'I don't get to go to the loo until I've finished Chapter Two' :p That last is a particularly good motivator...

Also: my computer games are on a different hard drive (and a different operating system, so I can't just install them here). My Windows drive takes so long to boot that I have to be damn sure I want to play a game before I'll start it; nothing's just a double-click away except Flash games. I use Ubuntu as my primary OS, so I have in the past put OpenOffice and/or FocusWriter on a different desktop instance than Firefox.

I use Write or Die, etc, etc. But mostly I think what's worked is the separation of Games and Work, and training myself to feel really guilty when I don't get things done in a reasonable timeframe. The biggest time-sink I have is when I'm at work. I have long periods of doing nothing, and can never quite get up the courage to just open a document and start doing something productive with my time.

Procrastinating... Dreamwidth, YouTube, things that I pretend are related (Wikipedia. And watching old episodes because it's vitally important that I know whether Gallifreyan doors predominantly swing or slide open! Right now!). Reading fic/sporks...

[littlebutfierce]

I'm too paranoid to write anything down on anything I take to work! I have nightmares about it getting forgotten at the office & someone reading it. >_< Although on occasion I have written (v. deliberately messy, garbled, in bits of 3 languages) notes for fic on the bus.

HAHAHAHA re: going to the loo. My bladder is quite tiny. That might actually work.

I'm not much of a game player but as soon as I read your comment I thought, "Oooh, I haven't played Bookworm in a long time!" Ooops.

Is your monitor visible by your coworkers? Occasionally I have free time at work, but because my monitor is viewable by other people I feel too nervous to even start drafting something in a blank e-mail or something. Sigh.

I totally watched a lot of anime pre-Yuletide, but it was all for my fic! NO SERIOUSLY. (Heh. The source had 6 seasons plus a movie, so I did have to do a bit of selective skipping around to see what time frame I wanted to set the fic in, & then I watched the whole of that season)

[charamei]

Is your monitor visible by your coworkers? Occasionally I have free time at work, but because my monitor is viewable by other people I feel too nervous to even start drafting something in a blank e-mail or something. Sigh.

One of my screens is more visible than the other, but even if they were both completely open you'd be surprised how close people have to be to see what's actually going into that Word document you've got open. (Of course, I also used to write during boring lectures at uni/classes at school, so I'm an old hand at this.) The trouble for me is that because I never know when the next bit of work will turn up, I end up wasting hours 'just in case' - and then, the moment I do give in, five project managers turn up at once. That plus I-should-be-working guilt makes for very unproductive days.

As for drafting into emails, U use Dropbox. That automatic sync (and by extension, backup) is niiice.

[littlebutfierce]

Yeah, I'm sure I'm more paranoid than I have to be, but my nearest coworker is like 4 feet away from me. She's obsessed w/what I eat for lunch every day, & this week I turned to my bowl, which was just behind my elbow, to realize that she was peering into it & I didn't realize at all. ;_;

I keep seeing people extolling the virtues of Dropbox -- I should check it out more seriously sometime.

[revena]

The two things I do that help most with getting words out are using a timer and using a spreadsheet. With the timer, I set it for an hour, make a goal (500 words within the hour is my usual), and then hit start. It doesn't actually matter if I hit the goal or not, but having set aside an hour to work on it makes me focus. This works even better if I have a friend available who wants to work on something for an hour, too, since I know I'll be checking in with her at the end of that time and want to be able to say I accomplished what I set out to do.

I also use a spreadsheet thing that I downloaded aaaages ago for NaNoWriMo (in 2004 or something), which can be set up for any length of time and any word count. It makes it easier to track how much time I'm spending on a particular project and how many words I have left to go, when I have a specific end-goal in mind.

I don't really have a favorite thing to do when I'm procrastinating on the writing, because I feel too guilty to have fun. Usually I end up doing dishes, which is pretty much a punishment.

[littlebutfierce]

Oh yeah, when I did the WIP challenge, I had a couple of writing sessions w/people, & that helped a lot -- there was one that wasn't even the two of us writing at the same time (due to time zones); I promised that I'd send PMs at the start, middle, & end of the time I'd committed to write, & faced w/either having to lie or, well, write, I managed to write!

I may have to look into fancy spreadsheets or word meters. I'm not sure quite how I'm going to track my word count for inkitout yet but it would be good to figure out.

At least dishes are good productive, maybe? If the house is too cluttered w/stuff or undone dishes or laundry or whatever it stresses me out, so for me at least I think even though it'd be procrastination in the short term it might (as long as I go back to the computer to write) work out better for me in the medium term.

[snowynight]

I will put some time aside and tell myself to write anything, just write and think nothing about the quality. Sometimes a plot will be accidentally formed. But once it starts,it's easy to continue.

[littlebutfierce]

Yeah, I love doing that too! Giving myself permission to write utter crap often, well, results in crap. But if I write enough crap I seem to sometimes come out the other side into the start of something good.

[kate]

I get angry at myself when I try to make myself write with timers and other things (750words, Write or Die, word wars, timers), so they totally backfire for me.

I just know I have to write every day, and that if I let it go, it means I will be losing sleep. Once I get myself sitting down and writing, it happens pretty easily, and if I can do it early enough in the day, I can get thousands of words out of it. If I'm sitting down at midnight because I absolutely MUST go to bed, I'll get whatever I'm looking for as a daily wordcount (currently around 500 words - I'm using a yearly wordcount spreadsheet that keeps me on track for my yearly wordcount goals) and that's it.

I find, though, that writing every day is key. Even when I hate doing it, I'm glad I did it. Daily writing practice works for me - I just can't do it with a hard and fast timer, or I get angry. I failed at 750words pretty spectacularly.

I used to have a lot of little tricks. Writing on the bus, for one. That totally used to work for me (my new bus ride is less conducive to this). Writing at work used to work for me too (now I'm too busy - I miss my boring days when I could write 2000 words or more). These days it's just a matter of making sure I write every day and I get a certain number of words a year.

[littlebutfierce]

I'm really impressed that you can write every day w/o a set timer or prod (a la 750 Words)!! If I'm reminded, so far I've been able to do it, but there have been a few days where the 750 Words reminders were late or nonexistent, & I forgot to write. Luckily I remembered before the day was over, but still a bit nervewracking. So go you for being able to do it regardless!! Especially b/c you can just keep churning them out if you start early enough -- that's awesome.

Sometimes I have boring days at work where I could, in theory, write, but my monitor is where other people can see it, so unless there are multiple people in a long meeting or all out sick or something, I'm too paranoid, sob.

[kate]

Oh, I totally have a trick for that.

Write it in an email. I've totally written 5k fics in email to myself. I have to go back and edit in extra line breaks, but I find no one at all seems to notice, even when I've got it up in the middle of my monitor (of course I keep the print on my screens rather small). Then I email myself (from my work address to my fannish address) the words for the day and voila!

Oh and as for wordcount - feel free to nab the spreadsheet from the post I linked there. It's really awesome as a yearly wordcount and there are little graphs that show you how you're doing every month. So cool!

[littlebutfierce]

Oh yeah, I keep my Gmail open all day (in a sea of vaguely work-related tabs). Buuuuut I'm still too paranoid, hahaha! I think I've done, in a draft e-mail, maybe a TITLE or a phrase I wanted to remember. Augh! Chances are nobody's going to look over my shoulder that closely, but... I'm still so paranoid. Especially now that they rearranged our desks so MORE people can see my monitor than before (previously it was only one person, & if he was in a long meeting it was Play on the Internet time).

(& thank you for those spreadsheet links -- they look potentially v. useful!)

[kate]

Oh, I was assuming you had some sort of work email program (Outlook or something like). Because if people see you typing into an email window, most of them don't even thinking about reading it, it's just part of your workload (at least where I am - I do a lot of work by email).

I'm still betting it would work - especially because you're so paranoid. When you hear people coming, just switch to a work related tab. I do this all day at work (the only way I can keep up with my dwircle, which is somehow huge).

[littlebutfierce]

I do have Outlook, but I am so worried about accidentally sending something to someone at work (say, typing my personal e-mail into it & the auto-suggest thing pops up a coworker's e-mail address & I get distracted by the phone or something & accidentally send to them...) that I won't draft e-mails in it that aren't for work!

The trouble is, I don't always hear people coming. My nearest coworker's chair is about 4 feet away from mine -- the other day I turned to my lunch (right behind my elbow on my desk) & realized w/a start that my coworker was peering into my bowl (she's kind of rudely fascinated w/what I eat) & I had no idea she was there. ^^;;;

I am pretty good at rotating between applications if I'm catching up on RSS feeds in Google Reader & I hear someone coming -- I think that's an all right risk for me to be caught reading, but the fic thing just makes me that much more worried...

[intothisshadow]

Thanks for posting the spreadsheets - they look interesting!

[kate]

You're welcome! Hope they help!

[littlebutfierce]

Would you mind if I linked to the spreadsheets directly in the comm's resources post? Or should I link to your DW post where the links are? Or... maybe I could re-upload them to Mediafire or something? (just to save your bandwidth) Let me know what you think... thanks!

[kate]

Go ahead and link directly! It's the gf's site and she's got more bandwidth than you can shake a stick at, so that's no worry at all.

[littlebutfierce]

Oh, super! Thank you -- I'll do that.

[intothisshadow]

Getting myself to sit down is a very hard for me. Partly it's because I know the start will be hard - I usually have trouble during the first hour, but if I can get through that first hour then I can go on writing even up to 6 hours (if there aren't things like having to go to work in the way).

The buddy writing sessions/sprints help me with the sitting down and starting part - I use them to kick start me, so to speak, and then go on from there if I feel like, on my own for additional minutes/hours. But even if I don't, I've still done some writing that day so that makes me feel good.

Cutting internet off helps me too, definitely. Back when I had a desktop computer as my main computer instead of a laptop like I do now, I also had a 10 year old laptop that was only good for listening to music, reading and writing. I wrote my all completed fics on that laptop - it didn't have a modem so there was no way to connect to internet with it, and because it was so old about the only programs it would run without problems were Winamp and Wordpad. So I got a lot of fic written on it, because there wasn't much else to do on it when I ran stuff on the desktop that required me not to use it while it was doing it. So that was definitely effective. Although I love my current laptop, all the bells and whistles like internet, photoshop, videos... are distracting. Even disconnecting the network cable doesn't work as effectively because that leaves Photoshop etc. to play with.

In addition to buddy writing in sessions/sprints, I also do it on my own using WriteOrDie! or FocusWriter. FocusWriter is great because you can make your own themes, and so inspire yourself with whatever images as your background on the program. And it can be distracting because of those same images too, because you might find yourself sitting there staring at the pretty.

One thing that's never worked for is music - if it's good, it's so good I get distracted and listen so deeply that hours can go by without me noticing. And if it's bad or just not to my taste, I get irritated and have to turn it off.

For LOLs, favorite ways to procrastinate... playing with the spreadsheets that were posted above, updating my websites, reading DW and LJ, going back to re-read my favorite fanfics for "research" purposes, reading writing advice, finding and testing alternatives to MS Word, oh and watching the canon although I don't do that that much anymore... maybe that's a problem?

[littlebutfierce]

I am INCREDIBLY impressed that you can write for up to 6 hours, if you get through the first hour. That is fantastic! I don't think I could do that. Yay for you!!

I definitely think no internet would help me, but then I sometimes do make concerted efforts to write & manage to block any thoughts of websurfing, & then... suddenly I need to know something about canon or a detail about something related to the fic. Sometimes it's the sort of thing where I can just put in a placeholder & go back & change it later, but sometimes it's something where it could change the whole thrust of the story, so I feel like I have to go look it up right away. And then it's hard to resist the siren song of the internet again...

Some music works for me while writing, & some is just distracting. On occasion I've been inspired by whatever random song iTunes throws at me while I'm writing, but sometimes I have to make sure to put on, say, wordless music or I'll get distracted. I do tend to work better w/some music just to help me focus--but I wonder if it's just having some noise, period (I might try some white noise recordings or something to see if there's a difference). Also sometimes if I'm resisting writing I'll think, "Okay, just write for 3 more songs & see how it's going! Then you can take a break!"

[perfectworry]

I've found the best thing for me to do is set a monthly goal, instead of writing X words per day. It just works better for me to have some days when I write a lot, and most days when I don't write at all - but as long as I get X words per month, at least I'm still writing (adjusted at the beginning of the year, taking my schedule into account - this year it's 10,000 words/month). Write or Die type things stress me out, and then writing isn't fun.

Okay, maybe that makes me a slacker writer, but I want to enjoy my hobbies. I have enough to stress out over in the rest of my life.

I also always post my fics that turn out okay, because the positive/constructive feedback helps me feel better. I like knowing that people like reading my writing.

As for procrastinating - I often go to TV Tropes and read the entry for whatever fandom I'm writing about, ostensibly to brush up on my canon, but it's TV Tropes, and you know how that goes.

I reposted this, sorry! I had originally posted it as a reply to someone else's comment.

[littlebutfierce]

I like those spreadsheets kate linked above, b/c they have the monthly word goal that you can put in, but it also breaks it down to the average of what you'd have to write per day -- that way if I feel like I'm ahead of the goal for the month, I can take a day off or two w/o worrying TOO much. I totally agree that writing should be fun, though (I mean, at least for people like you & me who are doing it as a hobby).

For me I think Write or Die can be helpful sometimes b/c I manage to just let myself spew words w/less action from my internal "this writing sucks" voice. Most of what I've written using it isn't worth keeping, but now & then there'll be an idea or a paragraph that I want.

I agree, feedback is really motivating! Though I try not to rely too much on it b/c I tend to play in small fandoms, & then tend to do unpopular pairings, so I don't usually get much, heh.

HAHAHA TV Tropes. Indeed!!!