Bella’s Scribblings: Procrastinators Anonymous

Bella Osborne

Last time on Bella’s Scribblings I talked about finding time to write. What I didn’t cover was how to avoid squandering it on non-writing displacement activities. School holidays is the time when most of us grab a couple of weeks away from the proper job to spend time with our offspring and hopefully get some writing done too. What actually happens is that offspring magically eat up all but a smidgen of the time we have and when we do get time to write what do we do?

I’m afraid to say that sometimes, not always, but sometimes we waste the time that we do have. I am thinking of starting a local group of Procrastinators Anonymous, but in the meantime here are my suggestions for combating procrastination:

My family want feeding – This is an easy one. Go back in time and spend a day making batches of food you can reheat and use fish fingers for the other days, they’ll be fine – that’s what vitamin supplements are for.

The house needs cleaning/tidying – scientific fact that living in a sterile environment isn’t good for the immune system so a little bit of dust will be better for your family’s long term health.

I need to go on Twitter to keep my social media presence current – and a couple of quick posts a day should do it. You do not need to read everything from the last ten hours on your feed nor do you need to look up everyone you know to see if they posted something interesting in the last few days. Trust me, they won’t have. Do not get caught up in conversations about dogs, cats or wine – they go on forever. Stop obsessively checking the number of followers you have and trying to work out who has deserted you – it doesn’t matter – well, certainly not as much as finishing your writing does.

I need to go on Facebook so my friends won’t think I’ve abandoned them (and secretly I can live vicariously through the exciting things they are up to). Holiday season is particularly bad for this. You could limit yourself to five minutes and have a quick ‘like’ session and all will be good. Once you start following those interesting links it’s all downhill and before you know it you’re filling in a survey to see what Hobbit character you’d be. This is NOT and never will be considered as research!

I need more stationery – this is the last thing you ‘need’. I think it’s time to be blunt with you (I think we’ve known each other long enough) You have a stationery addiction and it’s not pretty – there I’ve said it. You are attracted to it like a moth to a battery powered candle (I don’t like the flame analogy – it never ends well). So I feel a one-off exercise where you hunt out all those random stationery purchases and bring them together in a sort of stationery amnesty so you can see the size of the evidence against making another purchase.*

I need to tidy up my writing space so this is writing associated work – NO it isn’t. It may be a bit of a nightmare in your writing space at the moment but that would only take five minutes to tidy if you just tidied at warp speed without opening magazines and notebooks or eyeballing anything that distracts you.

Someone sent me a link to Funny cats on You Tube – don’t even go there!

Now switch off the internet and get writing!

*Obviously there will be exceptions where Moleskine, Emma Bridgewater or Cath Kidston items are on sale. You’re only human 🙂

Bella has just finished her first novel, Acting on Impulse, which earned her a runner-up place for the New Talent Award at the 2013 Festival of Romance. Every fortnight, Bella will be sharing her experiences and advice as a new author. She also has her own blog – www.bellaosborne.com

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Laura

I’m Laura. I started Novel Kicks in 2009. I wanted a place to post my writing as well as give other writers like me the opportunity to do the same. There is also a monthly book club, a writing room which features writing prompts, book reviews, competitions, author interviews and guest posts.

I grew up by the sea (my favourite place in the world) and I currently live in Hampshire. I am married to Chris, have a cat named Buddy and I would love to be a writer. I’m trying to write the novel I’ve talked so much about writing if only I could stop pressing delete. I’ve loved writing since creative writing classes in primary school. I have always wanted to see my teacher Miss Sayers again and thank her for the encouragement. When not trying to write the novel or writing snippets of stories on anything I can get my hands on, I love reading, dancing like a loon and singing to myself very badly. My current obsession is Once Upon a Time and I would be happy to live with magic in the enchanted forest surrounded by all those wonderful stories provided that world also included Harry Potter. I love reading chick lit. contemporary fiction and novels with mystery.