Hi, my name is Kelly, and I have a filing problem.
Actually, that’s not true. I don’t have filing issues. I can file if I absolutely have to.
Unfortunately, I always have more paper to file than I have time to do it in. And, I have other priorities…so when I get squeezed for time, filing is the last thing I want to do. After a while, the piles get so numerous I shove them into boxes.
See the crazy notes I leave for myself? The note on the left-most box says, “Writing To-Do: Immediately.” The note on the box beside it says, “To Do by December 31, 2009.” Um…yeah.
I took these photos in December, but the boxes had been sitting there months before that.
I have whittled it down to two boxes. But that’s only because I’ve had to paw through the boxes several times in the last few weeks and I made some executive decisions to throw a bunch of stuff in the trash (which is much easier than filing). But the fact is:
I just don’t want to do it.
Every once in a while, that attitude spills into my writing.
In Chapter 10 of my WIP, there’s a particularly badly-written scene with some unbelievable dialogue that needs to be reconstructed from scratch. It’s full of archaic language and I’d bet a few “as you know, Bobs.”
It’s going to take some time. And I don’t want to waste it…even knowing that the scene can be a hundred times better.
I’ve procrastinated so long that I’ve already edited through Chapter 21. Imagine how anti-climatic it’ll be to get to “The End” and have to go back and edit something halfway through the book. I’m not looking forward to it. When I type “The End,” I want it to be the end.
So…I’m going to take care of it. Within the week.
Maybe after I tackle that scene, I’ll get up the gumption to finally get those boxes out of my office.
Won’t you join me? What have you been procrastinating about? If there’s nothing in your way…take care of it!
I’m procrastinating on whittling down my “things I’m procrastinating on” list?
My current inbox file is above the top shelf of my neighboring bookshelf and almost as high as the printer upon said bookshelf. I also have 140-some-odd emails in the virtual inbox (including a few responses to you and stuff you inspired me to do… like ask about my novella… still not done). Among the tactile inbox are half dozen crits of various levels of done-ness (for other people), a pile of crits I need to implement on one short story – and I KNOW they are easy fixes… and other stuff that I don’t recognize beneath “stuff.”
I don’t know if its so much procrastination as just an overall overwhelmedness. With small bouts of procrastination where I check FB and the 3 scrabble games I play there, only once a day, and webcomics once a day… perhaps a total of 60-90 minutes tops. Goal tonight is to whittle down the virtual inbox first… because there’s a lot going on there: Blogathon, Blog posts, PR stuff for a holistic fair I’m doing PR on, lists of places I need to be resubmitting my work to…
I should probably go do that. 🙂 Instead of checking Twitter and blogs… right?
Hi Trish! Did you get that in box whittled down? I’ve been trying the “one touch” method of doing things. Take the item on top, handle it (no putting it on the bottom!) and move on to the next. I’ll sometimes dither over what to do with something, but at least it’s handled only once. (Of course, I often resort to that method long after shuffling through things a few dozen times…) Good luck!
I procrastinate about a lot of different things. I come up with ideas, projects, etc. and seem to never get them finished. I think my tombstone will read “She died with good intentions.”
Hi Sue! Oh! How morbid! I used to leave a lot of projects unfinished. I finally took a lot of them and just tossed them…and am concentrating only on a few at a time. It’s working out much better!