Motivation
I'd like to break from our ongoing mobility coverage to talk about one of the softer skills necessary to a mobile writer. After all, it doesn't matter if you have all the best tools and always-on communications if you aren't motivated to write in the first place.
It took me a while to realize this. I've been "ready" to start writing fiction for a while now. I haven't started actually writing yet. Why?
Simply put, I haven't made it a priority. I work long hours and when I get home, I often intend to write, but somehow watching TV or reading a good book always manage to take precedence. When push comes to shove, it always seems acceptable to delay working on the book "for just one more day."
Add up enough of those one more days, and you have months of lost productivity. Then comes the inevitable guilt. I should be working on the book, I tell myself. I feel guilty, like I've been shirking a sacred responsibility. And of course, the weight of the guilt further sags me down, and the book just seems so overwhelming, and I'm never going to finish it...
Sound familiar?
The fact is that all of the above is self-serving, whiny crap. I'm as guilty of it as anyone, but I also know that it doesn't have to be that way.
First off, no one is hurt by your failure to write but you, and you are the primary beneficiary of your writing. I was amazed how much weight that realization took off my shoulders. It would be different if you were a freelance writer with deadlines to meet, but if you're a novelist writing "on spec," you have nothing to lose by not writing but your writing. Writing is a tonic-- to me, anyway-- but it's not a necessity.
So lose the procrastination guilt. If you're not writing, you're only hurting yourself. The rest of us will literally never know what we're missing. Either write because it feels good, because you have stories you want to tell, or don't write at all. It's your call. Until you have a finished book, the rest of us don't care either way.
I find it also helps to have goals. Set your own deadlines. Now that doesn't work for a lot of people-- including me-- if the deadlines are too easy to push back, or ignore entirely. After all, writing is a private act. If you blow a self-imposed deadline, who's going to know but you?
Goals are competitions against yourself. While I'm a dyed-in-the-wool procrastinator, I'm also fiercely competitive. I hate to lose. Can't stand it. In the words of one my all-time favorite real-life heroes, "Failure is not an option." (Gene Kranz, the head of Mission Control for the Gemini and Apollo programs, for those of you that didn't see Apollo 13) I don't let myself fail.
And that's the key to meeting my own deadlines. If mentally reframe it as a race against time. If the calendar rolls around to the deadline and I don't have this scene/chapter/book finished, I lose. Might not work for everyone, but if you're hypercompetitive, it might just the sort of self-delusion you need to finish that problem-project.
Those are my secrets. What are yours? What keeps your fingers glued to the keyboard?
It took me a while to realize this. I've been "ready" to start writing fiction for a while now. I haven't started actually writing yet. Why?
Simply put, I haven't made it a priority. I work long hours and when I get home, I often intend to write, but somehow watching TV or reading a good book always manage to take precedence. When push comes to shove, it always seems acceptable to delay working on the book "for just one more day."
Add up enough of those one more days, and you have months of lost productivity. Then comes the inevitable guilt. I should be working on the book, I tell myself. I feel guilty, like I've been shirking a sacred responsibility. And of course, the weight of the guilt further sags me down, and the book just seems so overwhelming, and I'm never going to finish it...
Sound familiar?
The fact is that all of the above is self-serving, whiny crap. I'm as guilty of it as anyone, but I also know that it doesn't have to be that way.
First off, no one is hurt by your failure to write but you, and you are the primary beneficiary of your writing. I was amazed how much weight that realization took off my shoulders. It would be different if you were a freelance writer with deadlines to meet, but if you're a novelist writing "on spec," you have nothing to lose by not writing but your writing. Writing is a tonic-- to me, anyway-- but it's not a necessity.
So lose the procrastination guilt. If you're not writing, you're only hurting yourself. The rest of us will literally never know what we're missing. Either write because it feels good, because you have stories you want to tell, or don't write at all. It's your call. Until you have a finished book, the rest of us don't care either way.
I find it also helps to have goals. Set your own deadlines. Now that doesn't work for a lot of people-- including me-- if the deadlines are too easy to push back, or ignore entirely. After all, writing is a private act. If you blow a self-imposed deadline, who's going to know but you?
Goals are competitions against yourself. While I'm a dyed-in-the-wool procrastinator, I'm also fiercely competitive. I hate to lose. Can't stand it. In the words of one my all-time favorite real-life heroes, "Failure is not an option." (Gene Kranz, the head of Mission Control for the Gemini and Apollo programs, for those of you that didn't see Apollo 13) I don't let myself fail.
And that's the key to meeting my own deadlines. If mentally reframe it as a race against time. If the calendar rolls around to the deadline and I don't have this scene/chapter/book finished, I lose. Might not work for everyone, but if you're hypercompetitive, it might just the sort of self-delusion you need to finish that problem-project.
Those are my secrets. What are yours? What keeps your fingers glued to the keyboard?
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