What was I going to do next…. Oh Yeah, Write a Blog.

*grinning*

Hellion is going to kill me.

So in my quest to think about something to blog about today (because let’s face it, not *only* am I a pirate wench, I’m a HUGE procrastinator as well. And also see my blog from last week, it’s harder than hell to blog after Hellion when she’s on a roll), I thought that we’d have a little fun along with learning a little something from ourselves. Not in those self-help ways. Really who buys a $500 program from an infomercial at 4am and uses it to become a huge success… Okay, maybe you but not me. I think it all circles back to the procrastination thing again.

See procrastinating. I’m procrastinating in my own blog. I need a self-help group.

Yikes. There’s that self-help crap again. I’m losing it here.

*reciting* Onward, Sin. Move onward.

Moving on.

I procrastinate like there is no tomorrow. I even think of ways I can procrastinate procrastinating. It’s not hard to do. You just talk yourself in circles until you give up trying to do what you originally set out to do in the first place.

Now you see why I’m a good procrastinator, right?

Procrastinating doesn’t serve me well as a writer. As a writer, I need to be focused and driven. I need to be able to sit down for hours at a time and bang out *insert snicker* about 20,000 words in a day. Except, when I’m writing and feeling the urge to procrastinate, I think up different characters in funny little circumstances. Like the porn star and the Amish bumpkin in yesterday’s comment section. I can totally see it written. But am I going to write it? NOPE. That goes against my inner and exterior procrastinator. Yup. I know what you’re thinking. How did she get TWO procrastinators?

I’m a writer. Deal with it. I can write whatever I want. And if I want two procrastinating wenches as my personality, then so be it.

But then I’d have to write. Hm, Houston we’ve got a problem.

So today’s exercise of the day, how to deal with the inner procrastinator stomping around in your head, burning all your wonderful mental notes and purposely causing ants in your pants so that you can’t sit still for longer than two seconds.

Take two deep breaths. Think of your two main characters. Concentrate on their personalities. Think of a conversation the two of them might have.

Got it? Good.

If not, I suggest you think about it for a minute.

And no I’m not procrastinating.

Yet.

For today’s exercise in training the inner procrastinator, gimme a conversation piece. Just a quick one-two punch. Nothing that you’ve written before because that would be cheating. And even though I’m a pirate, and sometimes on occasion as a pirate that is acceptable. But. Not. This. Time.

Example: From the main characters in my WIP, Double Vision. Sadie, a booted out FBI agent and her undercover watchdog, Ash. If I were to make up a conversation between them, it would go something like this-

***

I watched him walk out of the shadows. He had that swagger that warned good girls he wasn’t in it to walk them down the aisle. He was trouble. Plain and simple. Something I didn’t need right now.
“I can’t work with you.” I said, matter-of-fact. “Call your superior. Tell him I changed my mind.”
“Sadie,” His voice was low, vibrating through me. “Afraid you can’t handle it?” His eyes caught mine, the moonlight shining brightly on his perfect white teeth. There was a spark in his eyes I recognized. This was the Ash I knew and once loved. And I was in deep shit.

***

Now, sit your butt down. Stop reading all those blogs (except for this one because you know how much you love your daily dose of pirate wenches). And prepare yourself to do some writing. Brace yourself for the conversation of a lifetime… Hey! I’m writing for you! You little procrastinator! Sit and write. Write a tiny little conversation. That is your job for the day. To think of a way to spur your writing onward and beat down that evil procrastinator inside of you.

Show me what you can do. Even if it’s a, “Hey, how yooou doin’?” “I’m good. I just got done doing an Amish bumpkin in the back of her wagon.” conversation. (Courtesy of the Porn Star and the Amish girl tale.)

What to do When a Rival Pirate Steals Your Booty. (Or otherwise known as: “How I got my groove back when my muse decided to drink rum.”)

I’m playing off Hellion’s blog of yesterday. So if you’ve procrastinated yourself into a coma, get your bonny ass to yesterday’s blog and read her fabulous blog and catch up!

Writing isn’t always fun and games.

We would all like to think that we sit down to the computer (or pen and paper if you’re real old school) and pump out 80,000 words in a month and submit it to a publisher and voila! you’re a published writer.

But I’ve realized it doesn’t work that way. And you shouldn’t expect it to be either.

Procrastination is a pirate killer. It causes you to walk the plank, and swim in a circle for hours at a time. And by the time that you’re ready to get back in the ship, you’re surrounded by sharks that have other plans for you. They suck all your energy until you can’t climb back in the ship and resume your writing. You find yourself trying to find reasons to climb back in the ship until you can’t remember the reason why you walked the plank in the first place but there’s no one whispering in your ear anymore. Your muse has jumped ship. She’s been on a deserted island, drinking up all Capt’n Jack’s rum (sorry Hellion!) and roasting her lazy ass on the white sand.

Recently, I roped that bitch back to my side.

For months I spent trying to write. I wasn’t exactly procrastinating as much as I was forcing my writing. It’s almost just as bad. Everything I wrote was mechanical, unreadable, no emotion, no feeling. It just left a bad taste in my mouth. I tried everything I knew. I tried writing something else. I tried focusing on honing a part of my writing. I tried writing sentences to spark an idea. I tried writing on a different chapter. I tried writing some fluff (which I’m very very bad at) and I even took a break from the computer (the biggest sin of them all!). And nothing worked. Nothing at all. And it was frustrating. I’m not the type that talks about things when I’m frustrated. I just let it fester into a boil that won’t go away.

Finally I figured out the key to my muse. Lure her back with the promise of writing whatever she wants.

I dunno if this works for everyone, but I live by freedom in my writing. I’m a free spirit. I write like the wind and let the wind be my guide. When I try to rein myself in, I get all bottled up and I can’t write. At all. So no more of that. I will write on a whelm. I will have a good time doing it. I will not restrain myself. Restraint is good for keeping the info dump away but allowing freedom in your writing is good for your muse.

Sunday, my muse was back with a bad sunburn and a bad attitude. Like usual. She boosted my ass back into the ship and handed me my keyboard. She told me to get my ass in shape or she’d never stay. And with that, I wrote the best 3000 words I’ve written since February. But of course, she doesn’t want to write what I need to write. She wants to write something new. Something fresh. Something that we both know and can attest to. And it made me happy to write for the first time in a year. I can’t tell you the freedom I felt when my fingers hit that keyboard. I can’t remember the last time I pumped out 3k in less than six hours. I used to do it all the time. It’s something I find joy in. And I’ve finally got it back.

So this was my little tale of how I got my pirate groove back. And it didn’t take a jug of rum and a session of pillaging (though I thought about it seriously for a while). What exercises do you use when the procrastination bug strikes? And if it’s never hit you, do you have a back-up plan ready?

Do It Right Now

Writing and procrastination. They seem to go hand in hand, don’t they?

Pirates procrastinate like no one’s business. Something to do with the rum. Boatswain Terri doesn’t know how to procrastinate (see: yesterday) because she schedules in her own rum and potty breaks, but we other pirates don’t have schedules—and we find that free time where we get to choose how to spend it when we get it is wasted on rum, men, and song.

These are not bad ways to waste time. There was this brawn lad in Glasgow once I…. Uh, gotta keep the blog length manageable, but let me say, it’s not a bad way to spend time. It just won’t get your book written. You need to write your book.

We procrastinate for the craziest of reasons. Like…I’m waiting for my muse to inspire me. No, your muse is drunk with you—and trying to steal your men while she’s at it. Waiting for your trollopy muse to inspire you is like waiting for a man to get up and do the dishes.

You end up doing the dishes, right? Usually after you’ve nagged him to death and finally given up he will do anything about it. And the dishes are just as clean and done as if you had had him do them.

So reverse your normal mantra and instead say: Write now, procrastinate later.

What’s your favorite thing to procrastinate on? And how do you procrastinate? Any rum takers?

P.S. I’m promoting The Romance Vagabonds today because Dee S. Knight is blogging today. www.romancevagabonds.com. She writes these *hawt* books with characters so real you want them to be your neighbors. Go talk to her!