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

[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.