I'm a procrastinator...yes, I'll confess it. It's my natural way. Through the years, I've tried to habilitate myself with schedules, organizing and planning, but none of it works.
I have, however, learned what does work for me and that's deadlines. I love them. I thrive on them. Writing routines do me little to no good because real life...meaning the millions of things that need to be done and seem to never get done...easily trump routine writing schedules and word counts.
Is anyone in this boat with me? This slow-moving-unless-we're-dying-of-thirst cruiseline?
If so, how do we impose writing deadlines on ourselves without a book deal and editor breathing down our neck? I've tried many different things through the years. Some of my more unusual ones include:
-Submitting horrid rough draft chapters onto a critique site (Critique Circle) to make sure I got them edited/polished by the time they went up for review (you have to pay for a membership to get the edit after submission option, but it was well worth the $30.00)
-Going to a partial submission/review workshop where the agent reviewing my half-completed novel asked to see the whole thing when I finished. (I completed the novel w/in six weeks to make sure the agent didn't forget about me)
-Finding out from a new crit partner that my book needed a lot of work...after I'd already started querying and had received some partial requests. (I wouldn't recommend that anyone do this one on purpose as, because of equeries, agents seem to request more wholes than partials these days).
These may be a little extreme and not accessible to everyone, but crit partners are a good way to impose false deadlines on ourselves. If we're doing it for someone else, to motivate them and us, then it feels like a more important deadline.
Now, without further procrastinating, the winners of my How Many Have You Read Contest:
Alicia 
Kulsuma 
Christa 
DianaCongrats and thanks to all for participating. I'll be contacting winners sometime today.
I have lots of other great ARCs, so look out for my next contest at the beginning of August.
How about you? Any other procrastinators out there? Any self-imposed deadline ideas?
I self impose deadlines and for the most part stick to them. In some areas I might procrastinate though. But I will be flexible if I see my deadline needs to be earlier or pushed back.
ReplyDeleteHehehe yeah. I'm a genius at procrastination. My solution: I make all my deadlines public.
ReplyDelete^_^
I'm not much of a procrastinator when it comes to writing. (Laundry is a different story.) So it's hard for me to pin down something that gets me to crank stuff out faster. When I was doing a lot of editing and revising this spring, I gave myself daily goals and a hard deadline for each project. That worked amazingly well.
ReplyDeleteI have unrealistic self-imposed deadlines, and while I don't always meet them, they at least fuel progress.
ReplyDeleteCongrats to the winners!
Hi Jennifer! I just discovered your blog and am looking forward to following. I could really relate to this post as I am the world's worst procrastinator, and trying things like word counts and schedules has not worked for me either. I enjoyed reading about the things you have tried, interesting! It's great to meet you and I'm glad to have found your blog. :)
ReplyDeleteThank you very much!!!
ReplyDeleteCongrats to the other winners!