10 Sure-Fire Ways to Stop Procrastinating
By an expert*
Procrastinating can be a real problem for writers. Faced with a blank page, the call of the wild twitter-verse can be an enduring temptation. Here are some tried and true techniques this alliterative writer has discovered for taming the monkey mind and getting things done.
* an expert at procrastinating, that is. Not so much at the stopping. So maybe don’t take this post too seriously?
Don’t buy a kitten.
First there’s the cuteness. Makes you want to stop whatever you are doing and pat them. Especially when they purr and get all smoochy. And before you know it they have put you into a kitten coma. You lose any will of your own and just keep patting. Just keep patting. I may be talking from experience here. Then there is the feral deconstruction of everything that you hold dear. Procrastinating is easy when you have to run around protecting everything you own from a fast, mobile monkey who wants to play with and kill it all.
Have children.
No seriously. I know this seems counter-intuitive. But there is nothing like only getting half an hour to yourself every day to make you fine tune your ability to drop everything and just get on with it when that magical time arrives. Having children makes you truly realise the value of your time. Because most of it is spent doing about twenty different things, some of which involve bodily fluids, and none of which you can actually remember a few hours later.
Get a water-proof notepad
All the best ideas come to you in the shower, right? So with the right equipment, you can start writing that story as you wash. There are definitely water-proof notepads available. I’m not making this up. Picture it: scrub behind the ears, add a vigorous fight scene. Shampoo your hair, describe the revelatory moment when your heroine’s true identity is revealed. Sure you water bill might go up, but if you’re getting a lot more writing done, it might just be worth it.
Put your mobile phone in a blender.
Turn the blender on. Self-explanatory really.