Procrastination

I am an excellent procrastinator. I can procrastinate the most essential of activities. "One more row," I'll tell myself while I'm knitting. Or, "Oh! I really need to send out that email. I'll write my grandmother tomorrow." This last one, I admit, I'm doing right now.

This is one of the reasons we initiated The 500. Writers are excellent procrastinators, and find all sorts of imaginative ways to not write. Accountability makes that butt in chair hands on keyboard experience so much better.

Why do we procrastinate? I would give you a thousand reasons why I procrastinate. I'm tired, I'm lazy, I have other things I need/want to do, there's a movie on TV, my mother in law just invited us to dinner, I remembered a book I wanted just came out; I could go on for hours. Though, I think one of the biggest things that stops me is fear. Fear of writing something bad, and, more often, fear of writing something that's actually kind of good.

It's easy to avoid this fear when I have nothing particular to write about, and I just pull some exercise out of a book or my head or the Internet and force myself to write. I don't particularly care about the project when I start. But, maybe I will once I do start. And maybe I'll keep working on it. More likely than not though, I'll write it, and then put it away and ignore it.

I ramble. Tonight was different. Tonight, I wrote with purpose. I had an end goal - sharing a story I tell somewhat often. A story of liberation and freedom. A story many have heard over and over, in a style that, well, isn't told with any sort of style. Someone had suggested a few weeks ago that I write it down and send it off. It's such a simple story, I had never thought to do this - not many would care to read it.

But so many who hear it love it, get it, and are immediately changed by it. Why should I keep it to only those who can and do talk to me? Writing is something I do, and it's what I want to do. I decided a while ago to sit down and write the story. Tonight, I did it.

And, I must say, it came out kinda good. It's rough, and needs some help (which it will get in the coming weeks). But it's good. It has phrases that I would never use in speech that add to the story. It's lost something in being written down; it feels less alive as I go back and re-read it. But, it gains a new sort of life in it's brevity. It doesn't dwell so much on the bits that don't matter; it highlights the emotions that I lived through.

And, it's more than double my required minimum word count.

Tomorrow, I think I'll try this writing with purpose thing again.

Have you written your 500 today? If not, what's your procrastination tool for the day?