How to Stop Procrastinating and Write Your Book NOW©

[DMKarder]

By Rita Emmet

What do you do when there is definitely, absolutely, undeniably a book in your heart that aches to be written, but you cannot get yourself to:
 Outline it
 Title it
 Research it
 Organize it
 Jot notes about it
 Start it
 Continue it
 Finish it OR
 Do anything with it.
And sometimes, you won’t even allow yourself to think about it or talk about it because the anxiety produced by thinking or talking about it almost makes you sick. So you keep repeating (to convince yourself? convince others? who knows?) that it’s simply not a priority or that you’d love to get to it but never have the time.
Something keeps popping up that has to be done right away or somebody needs you or any one of a dozen (hundred? thousand?) excuses.

How to begin

Did you ever hear the phrase "As a man thinketh, so he is"? Another way to say it is “Whatever you think about all day long, that’s who you’ll be and how you’ll spend your time”.
If you think about food all day long, you’ll eat. If you think about golf all day, you’ll MAKE time to play golf.
Are you spending time and energy NOT thinking about your book? Have you been deliberately AVOIDING any thoughts about writing your masterpiece?

Fill Your Life with Thoughts about Writing

This is where I found myself as I put off writing what eventually became my first best-selling book. I decided to turn that around and began by brainstorming a list of ideas to ensure that my life would be so full of input about writing that I could not help but think frequently, maybe daily, about writing my book.

Here are some ideas from my list. You could:

1. Join a writers’ group. You can often find them at local book stores or libraries. If they don’t have a writers’ group meeting there, ask if they know of any. You might even find a writers’ group on-line.
2. Buy a book about writing. I read at least two a year. Am now reading one by Stephen King (of all people).
3. Read the book by Stephen King titled On Writing.
4. Take a Creative Writing Class. Try local Non-credit college classes or ask your local library to offer one.
5. Type up and post signs around your home or office to get thinking about writing. Here are some examples:
“Rita Emmett --- Best Selling Author”
“I’m so happy my book, The Procrastinator’s Handbook, is on the Best Seller List.”
“All the top TV shows want to interview me about my best selling book.” (By the way, once my book was published, I was soon interviewed by Katie Couric, among many others)
“Ahhhhhhh - - the joy of writing a best selling book.”
6. Print, post and read the daily affirmations page I have included near the end of this lesson.
7. Print out your book title or book cover (if you have one) and post it over your computer.
If you don’t have a title or cover idea, but you do know your purpose for writing it, print it in big letters and post it where you can see it when you write. This will help to propel you.
For example:
 All over the world, people will blast away their procrastination
 My book will bring hope to the hopeless
 People who thought they were losers because of their procrastination will become winners because of my book.
8. Subscribe to Writers Digest (a monthly magazine for writers.)
I don’t think anybody ever reads the whole thing, but every month there are articles for writing fiction, nonfiction, screenplays, poetry, children’s’ books, e-books and so forth. Read what you choose; only what applies to you. Or/and subscribe to Publishers Weekly. I subscribe to all of these because I not only wanted to sharpen my writing skills; I wanted to learn about the publishing industry.
9. Buy MP3’s or audio recordings about writing and listen every time you’re in the car. Don’t play anything else till you start writing your book.
10. Buy a poster about writing and hang it on a wall above your computer. After a short time searching for posters, I found one of Snoopy typing away on top of his doghouse. It says: “It’s exciting when you’ve written something that you know is good!” They are available at stores for teachers. I called the local school and got a teacher’s catalog and ordered my poster from there.


Doing It All
I dove into this list and did it all. In between my monthly writer’s group meetings, I was reading magazines and listening to audios about writing every day. It worked like magic. I started to think about, puzzle about and mentally write my book. In fact, I couldn’t STOP thinking about it.
Meantime, I still lived my life:
 Running my business as a Professional Speaker,
 Traveling all over the country presenting Keynotes, Seminars, and Training sessions
 Spending time with our blended family of five adult kids and our seven glorious grandchildren (Now we have nine … the most recent two also are glorious. Imagine that!)
 Traveling with my husband
 Running our household
 Kicking back with friends,
 Volunteering my time for my favorite worthwhile charities, and
 Finding quiet time for spiritual nurturing.
Finally, I realized I had to stop hoping to GET the time to write; now I had to MAKE the time to write. At last the decision was made. It was time to start writing my book.

NOW is YOUR TIME! To help you get started, print out these affirmations. You will be surprised how they help. And now, sit down and start writing.

MY DAILY READING

I don’t wait for inspiration. Work inspires inspiration.

Images and words come easily when I sit down to write.

I write daily with excitement, enthusiasm, and confidence.

I do not presume that my audience will understand me, so I make sure to write as clearly as possible.

I support my assertions with specific details, facts, and examples.

I take short breaks as needed during my work periods, coming back fresh & raring to go again.

I use my time wisely and efficiently, resisting procrastination as best I can.

Everyday, in every way, I’m getting better
and better as a writer.

by Rita Emmett, Author, The Procrastinators Handbook, over 100,000 copies sold in 14 months.

[mr ploppy]

JFDI

Write a chapter, stick it on the internet and tell everyone you know to go and have a look at it. Then do the same thing the next week, and the week after, until it is finished. The encouragement to continue will come from increasing pageviews each week, and/or comments about it from people you don't know.

5. Type up and post signs around your home or office to get thinking about writing. Here are some examples:
“Rita Emmett --- Best Selling Author”
“I’m so happy my book, The Procrastinator’s Handbook, is on the Best Seller List.”
“All the top TV shows want to interview me about my best selling book.” (By the way, once my book was published, I was soon interviewed by Katie Couric, among many others)
“Ahhhhhhh - - the joy of writing a best selling book.”

Very bad idea. Aim for the top and you just set yourself up for disappointment, which will in turn lead to giving up writing out of frustration for not achieving unachievable goals.

[VydorScope]

Originally Posted by mr ploppy

Very bad idea. Aim for the top and you just set yourself up for disappointment, which will in turn lead to giving up writing out of frustration for not achieving unachievable goals.

Wow, could not disagree more. If you only aim at "achievable" goals you will never learn what you can do. The drive to excel comes from having a big hairy audacious goal and going after it. Have small steps to get there, but shot high and push hard.

[Nancy Fulda]

I used to argue with my district leader about this when I was a volunteer in Berlin. He always wanted me to set goals that were outside of my personal control. He said if you don't dream big you'll never get anywhere. I said I wasn't going to commit myself to something I wouldn't achieve.

In retrospect, I think we were using two different definitions of the word 'goal'.

These days, I just leave the whole goal thing out of it. My advice to new authors would be: "Dream big. Work hard."

[VydorScope]

Originally Posted by Nancy Fulda

These days, I just leave the whole goal thing out of it. My advice to new authors would be: "Dream big. Work hard."

That is good advice.

[mr ploppy]

There's a big difference between goals and dreams. Keeping at it long enough to end up with a finished "product" is hard enough, especially if you work within a vacuum. If you set goals that are achievable you're more likely to keep the enthusiasm going long enough to finish it instead of just binning it off and doing something else with your spare time.

[Dr. Drib]

Why not think of Writing as part of one's goal that leads to larger, more successful goals?

Think of it as a ladder: You can't get to the top without climbing some rungs on the way.

By setting incremental goals that are achievable, one advances toward one's personal goals. When a goal is reached (defined at whatever level one wishes), then new goals need to be set.

This is how I see it, anyway. Your views may differ.



Don

[JSWolf]

The way to get back to writing and not doing other things is to remove all access to MR.

[QuantumIguana]

When you focus too much on how high the top of the ladder is, it is hard to start actually climbing it. Not worrying about being the best writer ever, about someday being touted by Oprah, and just writing, that seems more productive. Of course, the same approach won't work for everyone.

[DMKarder]

For me, as a new writer, Rita was my cheerleader and mentor with allot of the above advice.
My editor/author and now friend was the second point of view here. "Don't get your hopes up...don't expect to make money..."
We actually need a balance of both to keep perspective, at least for me.
Can you guess which of these two authors is making money?

I have this quote on my blog [Promotional link deleted - MODERATOR]
..."you can fight without ever winning, you can never win, win without a fight." Neal Peart

[A.Rosaria]

One advice: Put butt on chair and write.

[crich70]

Originally Posted by Dr. Drib

Why not think of Writing as part of one's goal that leads to larger, more successful goals?

Think of it as a ladder: You can't get to the top without climbing some rungs on the way.

By setting incremental goals that are achievable, one advances toward one's personal goals. When a goal is reached (defined at whatever level one wishes), then new goals need to be set.

This is how I see it, anyway. Your views may differ.



Don

That puts me in mind of the old saying: "The journey of 1,000 miles begins with the 1st step." Joggers don't think "I have to run 10 miles in this race." They think "I have to run 1 mile 10 times." Likewise NaNoWriMo is impossible if you think of writing 50,000 words but if you think of writing 1,667 words each day you find it is achievable. I did it once in 28 days.

[JSWolf]

Get a typewriter so you won't have the distractions a computer can cause.

[Ginger Irving]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Get a typewriter so you won't have the distractions a computer can cause.

Do they still sell those silly old things? ;-)

To help avoid web-surfing distractions, I've been known to close my browser and set my firewall to "block all internet access". But I guess just disconnecting from the modem will do the trick.

Sometimes it's not procrastination, though. Ideas need time to germinate, away from the word processor, away from writing. Sometimes we're not writing because we don't know where to go with the idea yet. Maybe a "distraction" is really just you putting new information into your brain so it has something to digest and use to form new ideas.

[VydorScope]

Yeah, I definitely have to close twitter, IM, etc. I also purchased a thunderstorm track on MP3 that often plan. I need to live in my world when I write... anything that pulls me out hurts the story.