Day 2
1 hr free-writing + 1hr planning schedule
Jacqui makes a crucial point: for many of us, our commitment to writing is an ideal, not a practice. We can always find excuses to do other things, and persuade ourselves of their alternative importance. Jacqui gives some of the thoughts which overtake her writing. Here are some of mine:
- no one asked me to do it, so no one wants me to do it
- if I put in the time but don’t do good work, I’ll have wasted time
- I don’t make money from it so it’s not a proper job
- getting back to <that person> is more important
- progressing <that admin task> is more important
- there’s no time for a “proper” session, so I’d rather not start now
These are excuses masquerading as reasons. True, no one asked me to start writing; but that doesn’t delegitimate the choice. It just means that I need to remind myself why I want to. I could go on. As persuasive as any of my excuses feel, there are rebuttals equal to each.
The psychology of procrastination and avoidance is both unique and generic to each of us. Unique in our particular set of circumstances and responses to them; generic in our belief that, on some level, it’s better that we don’t do the thing we want. We can spend a long time thinking about the reasons for this — it’s interesting and I hope to discuss it another time — but one of the key steps away from this mental pattern is to start doing the thing you want even if you don’t feel like it.
And how do you do that? The same way you do the job you get paid for: show up at the time you are supposed to. In Jacqui’s words, “keep writing time sacred”.
Well, this is the crux of the issue for me. I want to write, I have ideas, I want to improve and commit and see where that takes me . . . But somehow, when it comes to scheduling and showing up, my resolve melts.
I listen to a general life-coaching podcast. It’s an area of self-help which has benefitted my approach to writing (Jacqui herself has life-coaching experience). The podcast host was surprised to discover that scheduling was the most contentious topic in her work with clients; people were willing to be challenged on their beliefs, intimate relationships, and financial arrangements — but not what they put in their diaries.
Scheduling pulls on all sorts of emotional strings, and, at heart, our relationship with reality. Showing up to your appointment to write means that you will soon learn how well your dreams match with reality; and depending on how large the mismatch, it can be easier to ignore the whole issue and find something “useful” to do instead.
It’s only by keeping our appointment with ourselves that we will begin to resolve these issues. Whether or not we feel like it.
So, that is what I did today. Albeit 15 minutes late, and after checking my emails to hope that some emergency admin would swoop in and save me from my commitment. (it didn’t).
A note about the daily exercises
This is where you need to plan your 30 days (for me, every Friday afternoon, for 30 weeks). You need at least one hour a day to do the exercise; I have given myself longer, to do the blog as well.
Either:
- “option 1” tasks, which are about continuing an existing project
or
- option 2 tasks, which are about starting a new project.
To get that “new car smell” I’ve decided to begin a new project. (Very on-brand for me: begin begin, begin; never finish seems to be my motto. I should get it translated into Latin and stick it on a crest, to disguise how useless it is.)
Exercise
- 1,000 words: of what might be a first chapter of your book – this can be, in Jacqui’s words, “nonsense or lies” (fabulous; I want this as my other Latin motto)
- the emphasis is on getting something — anything — down. Getting the tap running. The ink flowing. The metaphors cranking.
My response
- I am more naturally a planner than a “jump-straight-in”er, so this is challenging for me, conceptually. But not challenging for me artistically, it turns out. I took Jacqui at her word and started my novel with “The first sentence was shit.” Thereafter, I had a bit of fun denigrating my work and the page and the concept of writing itself, before my negativity exhausted itself, my mind got bored, and I just started describing what I saw: my main character, doing something relevant to her, thinking about what she wanted. I feel for her. Eventually, another character drifted in to talk to her, and I like him already.
- I don’t feel the need to keep any of it, and yet I don’t feel my time has been wasted — which is refreshing. A free-writing approach seems like a good way to deal with internalised pressure; the writing equivalent of doodling in pencil, before deciding you like the look of a line and could turn it into something. Or not.
- I am still yearning to fill the gaps which will give my writing more direction. I’m not used to meandering and often I feel constrained by not having “a good idea” of what happens next. However, the free-writing is supplying more answers than I expected. Not the factual questions, but the dramatic questions — the main character’s background, what she’s specifically aiming for, etc — which are the heart of a story.
all course content copyright Jacqui Lofthouse thewritingcoach.co.uk