Setbacks and Struggles

Today was a terrible day for writing. I kept procrastinating and pushing it off to some other time. Even this blog, which I normally tackle in the morning, I’m only getting now around ten at night. I have no idea what happened. I was just so incredibly unfocused today – I kept reading for a few minutes, getting bored, playing a game – that maybe lasted ten minutes all around before I stopped, checked Facebook and some other sites I don’t typically check. In other words, it’s exactly the sort of behavior I’ve been wrestling with for a while and the kind I’m trying to defeat. 

I did eventually churn out 54 minutes worth of writing today, around 12-1300 words when the dust settled. I guess that’s not bad and at least I’m forcing myself to do something. But the writing time itself was disjointed. I kept stopping in the middle of a session, restart again, then stop. Then lay down on the bed, maybe take a nap. I only just finished a full thirty minute session. 

Part of the problem is, I think, me struggling with the story. I mentioned before in my second post that it has to flow naturally – I experimented with several different ways for the second chapter: main character talks to the guards (which went nowhere fast and was pretty pointless), a trial scene (which was going somewhere, but didn’t quite feel right.)

And then there was today’s option, which is the one I’m going with. It actually worked, and I think this is the natural outgrowth of the first chapter and the backstory that’s been building in my head for the past few days. A new character has introduced himself – should be fun to see where this goes. Well. I know where it’s heading, I just don’t know how it’s going to get there yet. It just kind of hit me that yes, this is what would happen next. This is the natural outgrowth of story. 

Anyway, returning to the matter of procrastination. I’ll beat it, but I need a new strategy to tackle it. I need something to keep myself focused during the long, flat stretches of nothing that all too often make up my day. I feel listless, restless and bored but can’t seem to get onto my actual writing – although I finally made myself sit down and write. 

I’ve mentioned before that part of the problem is focus – I can’t stay focused on things for very like. That free timer software I downloaded is the best thing ever, and has really helped me keep track of my writing. Otherwise, I don’t think I’d be able to focus on even that. I have a feeling that I’m only going to be dragging my feel more and more once I decide it’s time to bump up the time on the ‘main writing’ – the larger these blocks of time get, the less inclined I’m going to be to actually sit down and write. 

But I have to. There has to be a way to beat this procrastination and lack of focus. Finding the right flow for a story, the most natural and logical sequence of events in a story is also something I’m working on – though I think that just has to emerge with practice. I think it has gotten better since I started, so we’ll just where things go.

Thanks for reading.