This. This is the story of MY LIFE.
And yet, literally as soon as I wrote that sentence I went
and started procrastinating again.
I realized that today was Friday and I needed to write a
blog post when I logged onto my computer. But then I thought, it is Friday and
it’s raining and I’m in a good mood, so I’m going to read some stories that I
have saved on my computer. Then I started reading more. Then I started watching
Youtube videos. Then I ran across this one.
You’d think a video that literally accuses you of
procrastinating while you’re watching it would make me stop, but no I kept
watching more.
Talk about helpless.
Procrastination is a problem that I think almost everyone
faces. There are very few people who are immune to it. There are some people
who are better at not procrastinating than others. While I do procrastinate a
lot, I also always seem to be able to know when I really do need to sit down
and start working. The problem comes when a project is bigger/takes up more
time than you were anticipating.
I feel like the problem when us, young writers in
particular, is that we have so much access to it when we’re trying to work. I’m
assuming that most of us do our writing on the computer on some sort of word
processor. If you write on paper, good for you, J.K. Rowling wrote most of Harry
Potter on paper before typing it up. You’re also incredibly lucky that you don’t
have all of the distractions that are readily available when you write on the
computer.
I in particular have a lot of reasons to write on the computer.
A lot of the times I do so so that I can talk to Margaret about problems that I’m
having as I’m writing or get her opinion on things. I also don’t buy a lot of
music so a lot of the music I listen to I do so on Youtube.
And while I’m not saying that adults don’t procrastinate
with them too, I find that our generation is particularly affected by distractions
such as Facebook, Instagram, Snap Chat, tumblr, fanfiction, Youtube, Twitter,
Pintrest etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. There is no end of website and aps that
you can waste your time on. There’s a guy in my English class who spend almost
2 days straight mastering the Flappy Bird game (and his high score is over 215
last time I heard of. Ladies and gentlemen, it doesn’t get much more procrastinating
than that.)
As I said before, I am no exception. I procrastinate a ton.
So does Margaret. Just a few days ago we both sat down and determined that we
were going to do something productive. This was us on Valentine’s Day when I
was working on the Romance post and she was working on a short story.
[2/14/2014 3:48:57 PM] Margaret: How goes it?
[2/14/2014 3:49:07 PM] Amanda : ... uh... got distracted?
[2/14/2014 3:49:18 PM] Amanda : Bad Manda
[2/14/2014 3:49:26 PM] Amanda : How goes yours?
[2/14/2014 3:49:51 PM] Margaret: ...
[2/14/2014 3:49:54 PM] Margaret: um.
[2/14/2014 3:49:56 PM] Margaret: hmmmmm.
[2/14/2014 3:50:05 PM] Margaret: We really need to be able to shut the internet off with skype still on
[2/14/2014 3:50:08 PM] Amanda : Distracted as well?
[2/14/2014 3:50:19 PM] Amanda : Yyyeeaaaaaahhhhh
(I got distracted well over three times trying to find this
tiny bit of conversation)
It’s tough not procrastinating. And I think we all KNOW that
we shouldn’t procrastinate. We all know that everything would be a lot better
if we don’t procrastinate. We’ll accomplish a lot more, the fun browsing and
mindless activities will be more fun because we won’t have the stress looming
in the back of our minds… but that never actually seems to stop us does it?
And then there are the things that you can’t really
procrastinate on. It’s all fine and well to avoid doing your homework until
9:00 pm the day before it’s due, but for a lot of things you have to be ready
all the time so that you can be prepared at any moment. You don’t want to get a
response or a call or email or whatever from an agent/editor asking for a look
at your manuscript… except it’s not ready for them to look at it. Burn and
crash go your dreams.
Okay so that’s a tad dramatic.
But still.
Procrastinating is something we can’t really afford to do.
Especially if we really do want to have two books before twenty *titledrop*. I
have less than 4 years left. You never know how long it’ll take to get
published. Perhaps this post is more an encouragement to myself than really
talking to you guys.
And to finish this up I’m going to give you the one quote
that always seems to be able to get me to actually do something.
It was said by the Terminator himself, Arnold Schwarzenegger
in a commencement speech to some USC (University of Southern California)
students. You can find the whole speech here:
But here’s the quote:
“But when you're out there partying, horsing around, someone out there at the same time is working hard.Someone is getting smarter and someone is winning.”
So, while
you’re off procrastinating, someone else is working hard and getting an
agent/editor.
If that’s
not motivation I don’t know what is.
No comments:
Post a Comment