What’s Worse? A Busy Day, Procrastination, or Writer’s Block
When I started this blog, I had such a great start. I began to post each day with something new. Lately with different things going on, it’s been bit more difficult for me to post. There just isn’t enough time to do everything. This is my excuse, and I’m sticking to it!
“The Land of Mañana” was a term that one of my spanish teachers used to say. It’s basically the idea of “it can be done tomorrow.” What if tomorrow never comes? What if you put it off for too long, and never do what ever you needed, or wanted, to do? I’m not trying to put off doing blog posts. I enjoy writing new blog posts, and thinking of ideas. Though when it’s a long day, you’re tired, and even if you have a great idea to write, it’s not likely it will be completely written down right away. As I said before, maybe that can be a good thing because it gives you time to think about that idea. Maybe with time the idea will grow to be even better when it’s written down. Just don’t forget to write down a note about it, otherwise you’ll forget. Some times on a busy day (or even week or month), it’s best to write because then you have a time limit. It’s like a writing sprint. Sometimes quickly writing down something can help your writing juices flowing. Just maybe, you might write something that you wouldn’t have normally. Plus if you don’t the things you need and want to do today, then you’ll be struggling to catch up.
Senioritis doesn’t only affect high school and college students, but writers as well. Though we use the term Procrastination. Sometimes it can be so bad that some authors actually turn off their internet, just to get work done. It’s easy to feel lazy when the ideas don’t seem to be coming as quickly as we hope. Then when it comes to a difficult scene, it might turn us away and steer us to distract ourselves instead of dealing with the issue. There’s a fine line between taking a break, and procrastination. We need breaks to help our thinking process, but if we take too long, we might lose focus. NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) is a great way to fight procrastination. First of all, you make the decision to begin writing what ever you’ve been wanting to write. Second of all, you’ve got a deadline, and even incentive to win. Third, you know others are writing along with you. It’s like a marathon for writers. You’ve got fellow writers and supporters cheering you on and pushing you forward. But how do we apply this idea throughout the year? We have to remind ourselves that there are others out there, like us, who are struggling with finding time to write and putting words on the page. We have to schedule time to write as much as possible, and stick to that schedule. If you join a writer’s group or create one of your own, it can also give the support needed to keep writing. Plus have you ever tried out that writing program “Write or Die”? I haven’t but it looks like a good way to make sure you keep writing no matter what.
There is a quote that I heard a while back, though it’s mostly connected to censorship, I think it can be applied to this topic as well. Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. said, “Who is more to be pitied, a writer bound and gagged by policemen or one living in perfect freedom who has nothing more to say?”
It’s an interesting quote to think about. It reminds us how we take forgranted of the freedom we have to write. We have such great opportunities to write here in the US, but in other countries it’s very difficult. Either their voices are being forced to be silent, or they can’t afford the opportunity to voice out their throughts. Every voice deserves to be heard, even if we don’t agree with it. We would never want someone to stop us from talking about something we truly care about. Even though we have more freedom, it doesn’t mean that we don’t have any thing to say.
We just struggle to find something important to say. Especially when we’re writing something, and suddenly you feel stuck. You don’t know how to continue writing. Some wonder if Writer’s Block real or just an excuse. I think it’s very real. The reason blocks occur is because something is bothering us. Or our characters are giving us the silent treatment. That’s when you need to be nice to them. It can be physically (like not having enough sleep, or not having enough water), emotionally (from either an outside force, or internal), or just a personal struggle that you just need someone to talk about with someone.
We all have different issues that happen throughout our days that effect our writing. We all have our own ways of dealing with busy days, procrastination, and writer’s block. Like they say, it’s important to know that you have the problem, that way you can solve it.
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