Just Say NO to Not Writing! Six Steps for Outwitting Writing Procrastination

Just Say NO to Not Writing! Six Steps for Outwitting Writing Procrastination

1. Set a timer for ten minutes and assign yourself the task of writing without stopping for those ten minutes on a topic you’ve been meaning to write about. If you don’t have one in mind, use one of these: describe an annoying co-worker or describe a time when someone you loved was leaving or compare the life you are leading to the one you or your parents imagined you’d be leading.

2. Write without stopping. If you can’t think of what to write next from one sentence to another, write the same sentence over and over again until something new arrives. You won’t repeat it for very long before the next image or idea arrives. Our minds don’t really like to bore us, and with permission to just write, interesting things will surface.

3. Now give yourself the freedom not to worry about how what you just wrote will fit with what you are going to write next. Imagine yourself in a situation that for you illustrates what you have just written. Describe that situation. Use a snippet of dialog from the situation. Tell what objects or people are in the room with you. Talk about what you are thinking.

4. Notice how putting yourself in a scene that exemplifies what you were describing in the freewrite causes you to use specifics–dialog, names of objects, actions and people. These hook you into re-living your experience and help you as writer to use illustrative specifics rather than generalize with summaries and abstractions. (Too many summaries and abstractions and you’ll disengage from your writing because it will seem bland.)

5. Now you may use editorial words, words that judge rather than show by writing a sentence that articulates what the scene you described illustrates about you.

6. You’ve created a scene that engages with tangibles and then asserts an understanding. Notice this and commend yourself.

It’s not as hard to get started as you might have thought!

If you are still having trouble, though, with your inner critic, tell that persona:

1. I will not worry about accuracy or poor memory. I can fact check later and the act of writing will in itself help me remember more and more.

2. I will be interesting enough because instead of focusing on the intensity of my feelings, I will focus on tangibles in my subject, the images I can see, feel, taste, touch and smell. They will convey my feelings.

3. I don’t have to appear perfect and neither do those I am writing about because it is in exposing and examining human foibles that we realize our likenesses and most human qualities.

How Do I Shape My Memoir?

Do you have a question about writing memoir? I’m here to help. Send me your question in a comment to my blog post or email me directly at suzannesherman@sonic.net. and I’ll answer it on my next Q & A  for HerStories. There’s more about writing and about memoir on my website: www.suzannesherman.com, so be sure to visit me there, too.

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Q & A: I can’t figure out where to start writing about my life! I’m 72 and my memories go back to living in my first house. I wasn’t even 3. That’s a long time.  How do I manage everything when there’s so much to write about? It all muddles together and I feel overwhelmed. — Muddled with Memories

Dear Muddled:
You can change that! And the solution is creative and usually greases your writing gears so you’re ready to go, clear-minded, and inspired.

Years ago, my father raised a deck of cards in the air and said, “Do you know how to play 52 pick-up?” I didn’t. He dropped the cards; I learned fast.

Memories can be like that game of 52 pick-up. And ordering all those stories of yours can be like playing cards, too, with their chronology (numbered cards) inside suits (spades, hearts, diamonds, clubs). You just have to avoid 52 pick-up. How do you do that? Here are some suggestions.

1. Choose a Time Period
First, determine the time of your life you want to write about. A timeline can bookend the beginning and ending of your story. You can always add to it once you complete the section you choose.

* Childhood years
* Years living in a particular city
* Time pursuing a certain goal
* Your spiritual journey
* An overseas adventure

2. Draw a Timeline
Once you’ve chosen a time period, determine the major events that took place on a timeline. On a blank piece of paper, draw a long horizontal timeline, marking half-inch tabs along it. Label each tab for a year, month, or day, depending the length of your total timeline.
If the time period you’ll write about is short (up to 15 years), you may want to use an annual timeline, for example, which could look like this:

I——I——I——I——I——I——I——I——I—–

1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 and so on.

3. Mark Major Life Events
Major life events can be: birth, graduation, the first job, moving, falling in love, meeting a nemesis, getting married, starting a business, meeting a mentor, losing a job, having children, arriving in a new country, getting divorced, having an illness, meeting a spiritual teacher, winning an award, becoming a grandparent.

Mark your timeline with the major events that happened during that period. This provides a chronological structure for your memoir.

4. Find the Emotional Turning Points
On your timeline, you can start to see the emotional turning points of your life. A turning point is when something happens that changes your life direction or experience in profound ways. Turning points are potent story topics.

If you prefer more space for writing as you work with your list — and remember, you are still creating the framework to follow for your memoir, an outline that offers structure and shape — use a blank notebook and label one page for each year on your drawn timeline. Fill in the major life events, emotional turning points and historical events of each year. Use that journal as a chronological record of your life from which to write your memoir.

These methods are invaluable. Have a good time with whichever one  you use!