How I’m overcoming procrastination and fear to write a novel

After I completed Nanowrimo in November 2009, my plan to add the extra 30 000 words and to edit my novel was dependent on getting up early. I thought with the last few months of sunshine sunning itself at 6 am, I’d wake up and hit my goal of  6500 words/week hard.

I quit my job at the end of 2009 and was going to be working full-time on building my company in 2010. I thought that since I plan my hours, setting aside time to write should have been a top priority.

But one month later, I found the temptation to procrastinate with exercise, emails and work too easy. Building my company was exhausting. Napping quickly replaced writing and exercise on my priority list. But emotionally, I was not feeling as fulfilled since I’d been avoiding my most passionate goal: to write.

I’ve had to reassess my plan because it’s a very discouraging feeling to have pumped yourself up to achieve a goal, only to find that you’re discovering new reasons daily to ‘put it off’.

In my business dealings, I was given a copy of motivational speaker Brian Tracy’s book “Eat that  Frog”.  Not having a lot of time to read these days, the title appealed to me so much, I started  skimming it.

First of all, “eat that frog” is a slogan for doing the hardest things in your day first. And it’s such a good visual: Anyone who struggles with ‘fear of action’ will know tackling an overwhelming job seems as hard as swallowing a slimy, squirmy frog!

Second, in the Introduction, Brian Tracy recommends that you envision the feeling of success that you want to achieve and you concentrate not on what you’re doing, but the feeling you’d like. I was reminded of a driver’s education tip I received when I was learning to drive: Don’t look down. When you look at the road ahead of you, you don’t have to worry about making the turns; your arms will naturally respond to your vision and turn the wheel to follow the road.

I gained these two nuggets of wisdom without reading past the Introduction. I wonder what the rest of the book offers!

So, today, I set aside the whole day to do some writing. That way, if I was a bit slow like I usually am to get down to doing it, there would still be many hours left in the day for me to do some writing. So long as I didn’t turn on the TV, sooner or later I would run out of things to procrastinate on.

Eventually, I got up the nerve to “eat that frog” . And when I sat down, I didn’t stop to look down at my fingers typing on the keyboard. I concentrated on the feeling of success I wanted to have at the end of the month. My eyes on the road, my fingers managed to type out another 5000 words within a few hours.

Admittedly, I still feel a little shaky processing what just happened. But I’m trying to replace my disbelief with self-belief and I plan to do the same thing tomorrow so I can keep feeling the fear and doing it anyway.

Tags: brian tracy, eat that frog, procrastination, writing