Master of Procrastination
After almost 9 years of writing I think I know how to write about procrastination.
I’ve always been thinking about how I could write my own story. What direction it would go in. What would happen. I planed every detail out in my head. But I never got it on paper.
Whenever I pick up my W.I.P. project I get reminded that it’s still unfinished after almost 9 years. In school in 8th grade I began to write on it. Since then it changed a lot of times. I was rewriting it more often than making progress on it. Thinking about different ways I could write a scene.
I also just sat in front of the PC or paper. Believe it or not my first drafts were made with a pen and paper. I did research for hours, getting distracted by other things. Before I finally got 1 to 2 lines down, closed the document and moved on to something different.
What helped me over that was to have a goal. A set date that I wanted it to be finished. So I made a little list of chapters in a spreadsheet. Filled in the number of words into it. And set a maximum word count that I want to reach. Then to get me to work hard on it I added a calculation that showed me how many days are left till I finally have a complete first draft of my book in my hands.
It’s not pretty or anything but it works. The number of days shows how many it would still be if I got 300 words down per day (unrealistic for me but still a little bit of an incentive). The different colors show me what stages the chapters are in.
The hard part about writing a book is not finding the end. But it’s about finding the beginning of it. I already have my end set in stone but the beginning of the story is still unfinished.
Now go and write your own story!
Start it however you want it to start. But write it. Don’t procrastinate too long and much like I did. Get it out there. Somebody will always read it.
- alias: Chris the Dragonslayer
How foolish I was back in 2018… we have 2025 and it’s still not done
