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writethisfanficOK, 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?
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?
no subject
Date: Sunday, January 9th, 2011 19:39 (UTC)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...
no subject
Date: Monday, January 10th, 2011 20:24 (UTC)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)
no subject
Date: Monday, January 10th, 2011 21:40 (UTC)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.
no subject
Date: Saturday, January 15th, 2011 11:17 (UTC)I keep seeing people extolling the virtues of Dropbox -- I should check it out more seriously sometime.