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bats


Writer, blogger, saucy chat mom, occasional bitch. Hablo español. She/her/ella.

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Aug
18th
2015

Writing When Struggling With—Oooh! Cat Gifs!—Procrastination · 4:13pm Aug 18th, 2015

(Warning in advance: this is long, rambling, somewhat personal confessional followed by incomplete and probably useless advice—ie a typical bats blog)

Hey everyone! Been a while since I’ve blogged, or…done…much of anything on fimfic.

I am sorry about that, because there’s a tremendous amount of what comes along with being involved on this site that I truly miss, but I rather hate showing up here empty-handed and boring, and quite frankly I’ve been empty-handed and boring for a very long time now. Not just with pone, but in general as I’ve sorta mucked about being all unproductive and miserable for months, struggling to find a desire to just get the hell on with it in some capacity.

This aimless wandering has been punctuated at points in the past with periods of particularly potent productivity (whee, alliteration is fun), but if I had to describe the last year or so of my life as a writer, I’d say I’ve been a fish pulled out of the water and thrown in some particularly sharp grass. Lots of flapping and gasping, with a few accusatory eyes cast around at the fisherman for being such an unrelenting douchebag. Of course, that fisherman is me, and the cause of this slow suffocation rests on my shoulders.

Hi, my name is bats, and I am a procrastinator.



This is probably not surprising to anyone, except maybe a few folks who looked at my ~400k word output on this site in my first year here and didn’t go digging any further. I’m sure it’s no surprise to hear about it from most writers. Writers are often a special breed of neurotic procrastinators, always struggling through the day’s writing and fluxing between hating the writing, themselves, and the thought of ever stopping writing. And that’s just the successful writers without taking into account the old cliché of the “writer” in the Starbucks. We all know that guy, the one who will tell you all about the novel he’s going to write…one of these days.

For the past year, I’ve been that guy, though thankfully reticent on actually sharing the details of the novel for the most part. It was pretty ugly. And rather boring. Boring not only for those around me, but for myself, as time marched steadily onward and I limped on by with ideas I wanted to execute, but tomorrow; today I’m watching youtube videos!

For a long time it went on like that, with a nice little well of self-loathing growing beneath me that filled in with a creeping fear that threatened to drown me. Because about a year or so before this past year, I had made a big decision in my mind about the future. See, I’ve spent most of my life apathetic about work in general, taking jobs to get me and my family by with a more focused devotion and care to the family than the job itself. That had been for the most part perfectly fulfilling, but I’ve struggled with procrastination and apathy for all my life, which made me not the best worker as you can imagine. I’d work at places for a long time even if I hated it there (and I always hated it there) because looking for a job is harder than working a job, and I had no interest in doing the best work or being the best employee, because there was no passion there, and when I got laid off a few years ago and went back to school, part of the reason was to try and find something that I was truly passionate about.

I’ve had dozens of little fiery interests, all eclectic and fleeting, that I’ve devoted more time and resources to than any prudent person would do, much to my ex-wife’s exasperation and the odd looks of friends and family (and they were odd; I’ve raised and bred praying mantises as pets. I bet you weren’t expecting that). I had hoped that school might help me find a path for something to do with myself that was less fleeting an interest than most of my other passions, even after my marriage spontaneously combusted and I found myself at the lowest and darkest point of my life.

Which is about the time I discovered My Little Pony. And, more importantly to this confessional of sorts, when I rediscovered writing. My high school experience was a somewhat strange one, where I attended a school with a heavy focus on art and had a creative ‘major’ along with a normal curriculum, which for me was writing. I was a bad writer back then and can’t say I liked writing all that much, but I spent my high school experience writing a lot, then dropped it upon graduating like so many other interests I’ve held in intense honeymoons before moving on to the next shiny bauble of a pastime. But this time it was different. Writing exploded out of me with the characters of the show, reams and reams worth, and the interest didn’t abate, it grew stronger and more constant, not a guttering match in pitch blackness like so many abandoned hobbies, but an ever-present lightbulb.

And so I made that big decision. I would be a writer. Oh, probably not a successful writer; 27 year old guys (at the time; gonna be 29 in a few days, yikes) are generally too old to make life plans along the lines of ‘become a rock star,’ but I would be a professional writer, and whatever career for, y’know, actual money would just need to fuel that passion. I’ve spent my life working that way already, but where before I always felt wasted and aimless while happy with my family, now I could have my genuine passion fulfilled and feel like I was really working towards something.

Which is where that fear that was filling the well and threatening to drown me came in. At first, it was a future-future plan I could worry about after more practice with pony words, since they were so fun. And yet I slowed down on producing those words. A huge output turned to a trickle, and then a year ago, I decided that cache must be at tapped for the time being and devoted myself to original fiction. And soon there I was, months after making that switch, with a pitiful showing of words written in tiny fits and starts, staring at this lightbulb of passion that wasn’t lighting up anymore and desperately afraid that if I shook the bulb I’d hear the broken filament rattling around inside like every other little honeymoon hobby that had flitted in and out of my life. Oh, every few months I’d have gotten my shit together enough to write something (including a short story of original fiction that’s making the rounds and will hopefully be sold one of these days) and prove that filament was still good enough for me to work, but where the hell did all that passion go? I wrote four hundred thousand words in a year here, why was it a fight to get out twenty thousand odd words now, all the while kicking and screaming through it? Sure, I’m a procrastinator, I’d fought with that all my life, but writing had flowed like water. I felt like something that had been vital to my heart had died.

I don’t think it would be an exaggeration to say that I hit one of the lowest points of my life this past year, maybe not as low as right before I discovered MLP, and maybe not as low as some of the darker corners of my youth, but still sharp and painful. Here I’d found this thing in a lifetime of fleeting distractions, pet projects, and abandoned frivolities that really meant something to me, that I really wanted to do, and before I’d even really gotten started it had crumbled away like it hadn’t been there at all. I did everything I could think of to jumpstart that passion and turn the flow back on, while fearing it really was the death of this part of me. I reviewed my writing habits both when doing well and doing poorly and tried to make adjustments; I had a love/hate relationship with word count quotas per-day, because at times they worked really well and other times they were a source of anxiety and writing would dry up for days at a time because that number was too daunting a finish line. I fiddled with this and that, trying to dissect my anxieties and get things in a shape to where I could get the flow going. I tried killing expectations per-day entirely and just writing something. I tried different productivity systems such as the Pomodoro Technique, Getting Things Done, and Don’t Break the Chain. I joined HabitRPG and made a character for the purpose of writing. Nothing worked.

Now, before you start posting ‘hey man, are you okay?’ comments and trying to remember what city I’m in to maybe call someone to check on me, this is where things pick up. One of a procrastinator’s favorite pastimes is reading about procrastination, which led me to a series of articles on the subject:

Why Procrastinators Procrastinate
How To Beat Procrastination
The Procrastination Matrix

If you suffer from procrastination, I heartily recommend reading this series of articles, and even if you are not a person who deals with procrastination as a chronic problem (you lucky son of a bitch) but have ever wondered what’s going on in a procrastinator’s head, I still recommend it. Not only is it an entertaining read—in a hits-too-close-to-home-ouch sort of way—it’s also a really good personified way of looking at procrastination and understanding yourself or others you know a little better. But I personally had been dealing with procrastination and getting by okay for years, so for the first two articles all it gave me was an enjoyable way to waste my time in what the author refers to as the Dark Playground. But it was The Procrastination Matrix that really hit home in a way I wasn’t expecting.

I’d suggest actually reading that article, because it will be immediately apparent why it hit home so hard, but the short version of it is the author describes his own experiences in his life with procrastination. He and I haven’t had identical experiences by any means. Most of my experience with it rings far more true with his descriptions of going to school, cramming for tests, turning in slipshod homework (or work-work once that was the focus of my life), and struggling to get the shit I needed to get done actually done. Where we diverge the most is on the bigger stuff. I had my little hobbies which were all largely Dark Playground time, while he had passions that dominated his life, and whenever he tried to focus on those passions as his major pursuit, suddenly all the interest dried up.

And suddenly my struggling lightbulb made a hell of a lot more sense. Nothing in my heart had died, it’s just my drunk-ass fuck-knuckle of an Instant Gratification Monkey had just decided that writing was now work and it doesn’t like work.

So what did this change for me? Well, largely nothing; I’m still a procrastinator and I was still in a pit of unproductivity, but the fear was gone. The worry that I couldn’t find the spark for that passion was gone, the passion’s still there and still a part of me, it’s just something that needs to be fought for against the monkey like all the other important things that sound much harder than hitting play on youtube. So armed with a lighter conscience and a new sense of purpose, I gathered up my willpower and assembled the tools to take writing back.

It took three weeks longer than I thought it would, because fuck that monkey.

But aside from that delay that was clear to everyone but me in my critical miscalculation of future bats’ ability to get shit done, I am officially writing again. It’s slow going as I ramp back up and I’m somewhat sorry to say not pony-related, but it’s going forward and I’m thus far free of my usual writing slip-ups. I don’t have the anxiety that makes wanting to stop such a strong pull for me and made the year before last so tough. And, most importantly, I’m writing again, some every day.

If you yourself are also struggling with procrastination messing with your ability to write, or really pursue any major endeavor, I’m hardly an expert at beating procrastination (you might be asking yourself if I am procrastinating on writing fiction to write this here blog, and right you are! Which is why I made sure to get an hour of writing in before starting this blog :ajsmug:), but I’ll offer what advice I can. And if you have any personal practices for putting that damn monkey in his place, please share, if not for me then for other people who might be reading. These systems of coping don’t work for everyone, as I am intimately aware of with my several attempts at different systems, so what I have to say might not be half as valuable to someone as something you could say.

First bit of advice is to really read the articles Why Procrastinators Procrastinate, How To Beat Procrastination, and The Procrastination Matrix I linked earlier if you haven’t already. I honestly think that personifying the monkey on your back as a literal monkey really does make thinking about how your own procrastination works less daunting and easier to think about in general terms.

Now the real first piece of advice: time spent working is a much more valuable measuring quantity than content produced. My current workflow is one to two hours of focused writing time per day rather than a 1,000 (or whatever) words per day quota. I definitely recommend switching the focus from content to time spent; you can’t cram time into a smaller space than it takes up, whereas you can produce a bunch of shitty writing quickly to get to a quota, so there aren’t corners to cut here.

It’s also forgiving in a way that word count quotas aren’t. If you’re having a bad writing day and in an hour of focused effort you only produce 250 words, you still worked for an hour and having that success equals the same thing emotionally as the day before when you wrote for an hour and got out 600 words. Okay, not really, you still feel like the day went terribly, but you still did it and don’t have to hate yourself for slacking. If you’re working on a quota of 600 words, get through that terrible hour with only 250 words, and give up in a heap, get ready for that self-loathing to show up.

Next, remove all obstacles that get in the way of starting. This is where a lot of the other systems I tried fell down for me. My biggest issue with Getting Things Done was what felt like the mountain of prep work that went into it (though I do suggest looking through the tenets of it anyway, not only is it sweet, sweet Dark Playground time but you can cannibalize the good stuff for yourself even if the rest of the system doesn’t sound good to you). Breaking down the tasks into smaller and easier to tackle tasks is all well and good (not exactly useful for the actual activity of writing, though sometimes telling yourself to just “Write one sentence,” might be all you need to push forward), but setting up schedules, figuring out exact day plans, reviewing those plans, planning future plans, etc. vacillated between being Dark Playground time for me to use to never getting around to starting and being the thing I then procrastinated on doing. It also hurt the Pomodoro Technique for me, since I’d procrastinate on actually setting an alarm. Yes, I’m aware I really suck at this.

So, cut down every single thing that stands between you and the project at hand. Have Word or GDocs opened at all times, cursor on the last sentence written. If you keep notes on projects, have them pulled up at all times and aligned with where you’re at in the story (Ex: I keep all my outlines and research links in Evernote, which I’ve got pulled up and set on the project-in-question’s folder). If you’re easily tempted and need to close out potential distractions like skype, the general internet, Steam, your cell phone, youtube, podcasts, etc., before you can start working, develop a ritual of closing them so that you can do it with the least amount of thinking. The ultimate goal here is that when it’s time to start working, you can just start working without having to do jack, just leap in. Starting’s the hardest part, and the less there is to do before starting, the faster you can yank off that band-aid.

Next, find a way to hold yourself accountable in some fashion. This is a touchy thing, as one of my personal problems revolves around anxiety. I have a diagnosed anxiety disorder, and as a result it can really be a bitch for me. I didn’t go too deep into it in the confessional part, but I had a cyclical problem even back when the flow was good where anxiety would mount over the course of time just from dealing with my own quota system and having failures compound, until I crashed and burned for a while and then rebuilt and started up again later. Combine this with anxiety being a trigger for depressive episodes of my bipolar disorder and this was a really rough cocktail I had going on for myself. But anxiety remains a vital element of daily life and the trick is to keep it in a reasonable range, not just for others with anxiety problems like me but for everyone to keep from frying your nerves and needing to take breaks.

So for this, first thing is to set realistic and modular goals. Going back to time spent as the valuable quantity, set your daily goal as time blocks. Have a must-do goal, and a want-to-do goal. For me, my daily goal right now is one hour must-do and two hours want-to-do. Even on busy days, I can generally find an hour of time to devote to writing and most people can, too, unless their lives are in a stranglehold schedule, in which case they’ve got other problems than procrastination.

Try to schedule actual blocks of time for these goals. I’ve been working on trying to always make 2:00 to 3:00 PM every day a writing hour. BUT, in setting these goals and schedules, plan for failure. Distractions are the procrastinator’s bread and butter, and this is where modularity comes in handy. Many times now, my scheduled hour block turns into a productive half hour only, but that’s okay because I can pick up the second half hour later and still hit that goal. If I set that scheduled hour at the end of the day, though, suddenly the failure is a lot more anxiety-ridden.

Last part of the accountability is some method of logging. This is where HabitRPG somewhat came in for me (which I’m still playing though it hasn’t been the most useful), Don’t Break The Chain failed, and I ended up mostly resorting to my own system. Right now I have an excel spreadsheet I’m using. It’s got a spot for the date, a place to pop in the total word count on a project as my starting point for the day, a place to log the number of hours I’ve worked, and a place that logs my total words written that day. Now, the important part for me is that last one: I set it to be a simple equation that subtracts my starting word total from tomorrow’s starting word total. This was to help with my ‘daily quota counts’ anxieties by divorcing myself from the word count for a day until after the fact, which I find makes it less of a thing to worry about. The exact details of this system is much more a personal thing, but I do suggest finding some method of logging work done for yourself. The idea behind Don’t Break The Chain is having something to look back on and motivate yourself to keep going because you’ve been doing well and have something to look at proving that, which I feel is a valuable tool, and one of the things from Getting Things Done I appreciate is the self-reflection periods. Having the data to look at for that is helpful and worthwhile.

And the last, more important piece of advice.

Just start. Right now. Drop what you’re doing, pull up your project, and just start. One of the heaviest and hardest parts of dealing with procrastination is getting lost in the plans for working eventually, the day-dreaming of what it’ll be like when you’re all done doing a thing, the very first move off into the Dark Woods. That first step is always the hardest every single day, so just do it. Stop thinking, do it now.

I know, that was shitty of me, because you didn’t do it because you’re reading a blog and there’s still a little left to read, but the self-loathing’s still there. I’m sorry, I totally understand, but hold onto that bit of anxiety anyway and try to really internalize it as a perpetual running spark in your core. Tomorrow melts into today so fast, and if you don’t have that right now burning in the pit of your stomach it’s just so damned easy to make it tomorrow instead, and tomorrow never ever comes. It’s always today. So do it today. Make it today, if not this minute, than the first minute of the very next hour, and hold yourself to that.

Since I’ve started writing again, I can feel the dramatic change in myself that writing always brings me when I’m on that wagon. I don’t just feel emotionally better, I feel physically better, because that passion lightbulb is actually sunlight and I’m starved for vitamin D. The lightbulb is on again, even if every day it’s an uphill battle to start, and I’m so happy I could cry.

I know this was a lot, and probably largely rambly and boring, so if you made it this far through you deserve a gold star. Thank you so much for reading. Leave some advice for me or others if you’d like, or just leave any ol’ comment. I miss you guys.

TTFN.

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Comments ( 19 )

Damn you Skype.

Good advice, bats. Glad to see you're gonna get back in the saddle, as it were, even if it isn't pony-related.

I once wrote a paper about procrastination for a college class on Sociology. It was more of a personal case study than an essay, and I think the fact that I turned it in two weeks late served as a testament to the words within.

Somehow, I still snagged an A.

I still find some issues with procrastination - work and schedules are just awful things.. - but then I realized, my writing isn't meant to be created on a planned timeline, on a set course of action. I do my best writing by the seat of my pants, often inspired by a slip of the tongue or a silly phrase or idea, and when I try to plan something out, I lose all aspirations of writing, and begin forcing away the work. It's like you said, writing is fun unless it's work.

Personally, I don't think I can help out in procrastination as much since I've come to accept it as a part of me more than I've tried to beat it, but I can offer that writing does have a time and place - and I'm certain that's tomorrow. :rainbowlaugh:

Sure, it's not top-notch novel quality, but I'm happy writing it :D What more could one want?

Preach, Batsy!

3328982 This. So much of this. :ajbemused:

Thanks for this, bats. This comes at a good time for me, as I'm just hitting my first big round of procrastination with writing.

Similarly to you, I had invested some time and love into writing during my high-school days, as well as undergrad. Nothing back then ever panned out in the end, no one project ever got finished. It wasn't until I discovered FiM this year that, to my surprise, I rediscovered (and reinvested) my love for writing. My first and biggest goal once I got onto this site was to write at least one completed work, whether it was a one-shot or otherwise. And I did it; gave myself a pat on the back and all that.

Now I'm wanting to complete a multichapter work, which has been painstakingly painful recently since it's turned into work. I realized it, but I didn't know about those resources you linked about procrastionation beforehand. Thank you for that, as well as your testimony. I'll be putting this all to use in getting back on the right track. :twilightsmile:

My way of dealing with procrastination (at least when it comes to writing) is having someone to do it for. when i was just writign for my own pleasure i would get out maybe a page in a year and then suddenly find my interest otherwise engaged (mostly in another one page for another idea that never grew). When i started writing for fimfiction, i hit a similar roadblock, this time worsened by the fact that i DID get feedback, and it was terrible. Not even constructive feedback, just an anonymous "your story sucks".
But everything changed, when the Majinie attacked.
I put my story in a google doc, shared it with her and now we just write and edit whenever something pops into our heads, and we know there is someone on the other side reading and working off that and going on, even if one of us hits a roadblock. So shraing the burden and the success really works out for me.

Hi, my name is bats, and I am a procrastinator.

Welcome to the club. We serve the chips and whatever else we can find in the pantry.

I love you this. One of my biggest problems, this right here. I'm still at work, so I really can't start writing right now (o hoh, why are you reading a blog then, you might say. :rainbowlaugh:), but 10PM tonight, no distractions, no YouTube, no FimFic, just me, the crushing anxiety reminding me that there's no way in hell I'll ever write anything worth reading, and the GDoc.

Also, it's great to see that you're still hanging around here. Don't be a stranger. Even if you don't have ponyfics for us to savor, we'd still love to hear from you every now and again.

Man, shit, those blogpost totally broke me. I've been fighting with my monkey the last five years and in the last eight months it has been beating me like a punching bag, giving me panick attacks and making me give up a lot of thing I liked to do. Thoug going to the psychologist have been helping me a lot (at the same time though that I fall in a pool of financial bad luck), and I started writing a little every day for the last mont, it's incredible how hard it is. I try to write with a pen and paper so I can't get so easily distracted, and, even thoug almost every timeI start doing it I ended in the "flow" and the happy playground, every day my monkey fu**ing forget how good that feels and does anything it can to distract me or send me to Q4. And the worst thing is that my monkey is like a damn genius, it always found the way to make Q4 sounds like the most rational and inteligent option.
Damn, those post really made me see more clearly a lot of things, and I'm really, really thankfull you have taken your time to write this. Seriously, thanks man.

Go get it, bats! Grab it like a doberman! Sink your teeth into its soft jugular and shake it!

I think I'm going to have a taco tonight.

Thank you for the post, and especially those links. I ordered one of their "Life In Weeks" calendars, and I'm going to have to see if those posts can give me a better framework to kick myself toward something like productivity.

One thing I've found, in terms of writing, is that my Instant Gratification Monkey fucking loves writing if I'm trying to do something else from Q1 or Q2.

I can often get to writing by deciding I'm going to fold laundry.

I have no idea how to get around to actually folding laundry before the Panic Monster forces me to. (Generally in the form of some actual adult threatening to come to my house.)

Now, what my Monkey hates is finishing something I started writing (or finishing anything I start in general.) My only trick for that is to trick the Monkey into wanting to write enough times that I get to the tipping point. It only rarely works, where some Monkeys fling poo mine flings ideas for something else to write, especially when I'm getting closer to the end of a project. But every now and then I make to to the tipping point and convince the Monkey we might as well finish this one.

I have to admit my personal method of self-motivation is totally useless for other people, but I do actually have a "life tracking sheet" which tells me what I've done and how much I've accomplished.

I think it feeds my deep love of seeing numbers go up.

I'm glad to hear you've been writing again, bats. I hope it goes well for you. And if you ever have more pony to pony, I'll read it.

And probably hate it, because I'm still TD. But you know. I'll hate it with love.

So, I'm a little late - found this while randomly reading blog links, at the urging of my monkey - but it was worth the time spent. A lot of my struggles over the past few years have been trying to deal with procrastination in one form or another. I've got some things and they're working for me, but the way they're laid out here is helpful.

Anyways, I did have one tip on writing habits. As far as writing every day goes, I think part of the struggle is re-capturing the 'flow' from the previous session. The better you can get into and out of the zone, the shorter the distance between the gateway to the dark forest and the tipping point is. A trick that's been useful to me there is the idea of leaving a 'ragged edge'. When you stop writing, don't stop at a logical point, like the end of a chapter, paragraph, or sentence - stop in the middle of a thought, line of dialogue, or even a word.

This gives a more immediate starting point when you come back. There's less startup time, less figuring out what to do next - you know what you're going to do, at least until you reach the end of the thought that you cut off, and by then, you'll have re-captured more of the flow more easily. It places the banana of accomplishment a little closer, to placate that monkey more quickly.

It's a small thing, but it helps me.

Nice post. I'll certainly go read those other articles sometime soon. As for my semi successful tactics against procrastination, only have a few suggestions that have worked on and off for me. Some basic stuff like getting sunlight and actually moving around a bit during the day. Healthy body leads to active mind and all that.

The more personal one that I've found helpful is actually being overly ambitious in a fairly specific way. I will set really high goals for myself, but then not beat myself up for not reaching them. Example: instead of setting a reasonable goal of 500 words a day and then sometimes missing or sometimes hitting, I will set a goal of 5k words a day. Yeah I'll probably not make that one, but ad long as I sitbdoiwn and write something the day isn't a total failure. I've yet to leverage it for any long term success, but it has been a good way to avoid the crushing sense of failure that comes from having a goal that I just can't seem to manage no matter how reasonable it is.

3366042

Yikes, that would drive me crazy and I'd never get anything done. :rainbowlaugh:

Since writing this blog, I've been gradually refining my routine and have gotten into this habit of establishing a writing 'work day' around the rest of my schedule. Like most people, I don't actually have time for a full time job spliced into the rest of my life, but I have time for a part time one, so I have one now, where I'm my own boss and my schedule is somewhat flexible when it starts but has a set amount of time. I've also slightly modified my expectations to be both time and word count specific; each time block goes for a certain time, but if I get to 500 words in that block, I'm officially allowed to goof off for the rest of that allotted time. I'm certainly not perfect at it, and have had a couple missed days and a couple missed time blocks, and were I a real employee I'd most certainly be fired, but it's gotten an average of over 800 words a day out of me.

I've been using a similar system myself the last couple of days. Hour blocked out, but after a certain amount of words I let myself move to other writing related activities.

As with most things, its all about figuring out the cheat code that tricks our glitchy brains into productive activities. Hopefully for long enough that we can build habits for it.

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