Stop Dicking Around and Start Writing Your Blog Content

By David Eedle |

I have the capacity to be the master of procrastination. In the lead up to actually sitting down and writing this post I have:

Taken a call from a friend to ask if she could drop her dog over to hang out for the day because she has a feature film crew in her house and the dog was getting under foot
Taken delivery of said dog, only to discover that the film crew will be on site at the friend’s house for the next two weeks. I think we’ve just agreed the dog can come visit each day for a fortnight. Delightful news for our three cats
Opened an email and decided to deal on the spot with its contents, something to do with web hosting for one of our businesses
Stopped everything else and signed up a new video hosting account, and started a video upload because of a seeming crisis with another video host
Made a pot of green tea because it seemed like a good time to road test a new tea leaf mesh ball I picked up at the kitchen shop a few days ago
Jotted notes about some more posts I think would be good to write for this website
Visited the bathroom
Said hi to someone who’s come over for lunch with Fiona

Do you sense a theme here? I rather enjoy writing, once I hit the keyboard with a well formed series of thoughts bubbling along in my mind, I generally find it easy to crank out a first draft 1,000 words or more. And once that’s done it’s simple process of then reviewing, editing, testing it on Fiona for feedback and assembling the final piece to post onto the website.

My biggest problem is STARTING. Once the words start to flow onto the screen I’m rocking and rolling and my initial hesitation is left behind in the wake of fingers flying across the keyboard – I was even told I was a noisy typist the other day by a bunch of guys on a Skype phone conference, one of them IM’d me to ask me to mute my microphone because the rattle could be heard down the line in India and San Francisco where the other conference participants were located. I was just typing a few notes, but without their prompting would never have know I was thumping away deliriously on my poor Mac’s keyboard. Lucky they build ‘em tough in Cupertino.

Scan the internet and you’ll discover a myriad of famous authors and their writing techniques and habits, I quite like American playwright, screenwriter and novelist Paul Rudnick’s thoughts:

“Writing is 90 percent procrastination: reading magazines, eating cereal out of the box, watching infomercials. It’s a matter of doing everything you can to avoid writing, until it is about four in the morning and you reach the point where you have to write.”

One of Australia’s most successful novelists Bryce Courtney told Reuters in November 2008 that he considers himself extremely disciplined:

“Alarmingly so. My day starts at 4.30. I get up and take the dog for a walk or go to the gym for an hour and then have breakfast and by 6.30 a.m. I am writing and I don’t get up until 6.30 at night. That is for six days a week, for seven-and-a-half months a year, and I always finish books on August 16 and then go and teach in America on August 18. l guess you would call that discipline but it is absurd too.”

In contrast, my alarm went off at 6am today, I hit snooze and rolled over back to sleep and woke again at 7.30am to the normal weekday clatter of our children making breakfast. Clearly Fiona and I shouldn’t have stayed up watching the late movie You, Me and Dupree last night (better than one might have at first thought) . In both our defences, I must hasten to point out that Fiona was out jogging before dawn, and I am normally an early riser but have been feeling very lethargic due to a bout of flu last week.

I never have considered myself naturally organised, which is why I love a list, and I work hard to plug through my tasks for the day, and tick them off on a list. This is my form of self-imposed discipline, tasks left uncompleted haunt me with their lack of a strike through line.

Consequently I feel a significant sense of achievement for each item ticked off, and each list completed and tossed in the rubbish. And never more so for a writing task, whether it be a blog post or a letter to the bank manager. My main output these days is website content and blog content, which I enjoy because in general I can produce one or two pieces a day.

After years of writing everything from workshop training materials to business plans for venture capitalists I’ve come up with my writing rituals and habits. They are not dissimilar to many lists of ideas you’ll find online, which simply reminds us that all writers, whatever their ilk or genre face the same hurdles in their quest to produce good writing – you could be writing freelance, or for your job, or for fun. But inevitably you’ll need to develop writing strategies. Some never really find a path – like Carl in You, Me and Dupree who outsources the writing of his share of wedding present thank you notes to the unwelcome houseguest Dupree.

1. Stop Dicking Around

OK, maybe some tough love is called for. At the end of the day you are the only person who can force you to start a writing task. Use guilt, a baseball bat, or eyeing impending financial doom. Sit down at the computer, insert a metaphorical blank page and begin. One hint I find incredibly useful is to think through the last 24 hours and try and find a hook between real life and the topic of my post. For example, although this blog post was planned last week, this morning I had You, Me and Dupree in my head, especially outsourcing of wedding present thank you’s.

2. Breakdown into bite sized portions

Whether you are writing a 1,000 word blog post, or 150,000 word Booker Prize entry, an overwhelming task is made manageable by breaking it down into pieces. For example, for this post I had four notes jotted down:

All the interruptions to starting, dog, email, phone
Ritual, like putting the left boot on first (a reference to a famous sportsman I once read would only feel ready for a game if he put his left sock and boot on before the right sock and boot)
How others prepare
My list to get the job done

I also had Conor bullet points – our eight year old’s predilection to think in bullet points, but it’s not quite right for this article

3. Prepare Your Information

Pull together the information you need. For example, I have half a dozen browser windows open right now, each with a piece of information I’m using in the post. There are links off to Wikipedia, writing web sites and the IMDB (for You, Me and Dupree). If necessary print off pages and arrange them on the floor (one of my favourite tricks) in the order you intend to use their information nuggets.

4. Find a quiet spot , change of scenery

I have a study where I work most of the time, but I also write and work a great deal of our website content and blog content at our cafe. Sometimes a change of scenery can trip the brain synapses. And in this time of wireless networks around the house, I’ll sometimes grab the MacBook and head off to a different part of the house. I haven’t quite figured through why moving to the dining table, or the couch in our bedroom, or another spot around the house can trigger a writing burst, but it does. I think it’s something to do with moving from the familiar to the not quite so familiar. When in my study I’m distracted and tempted by all my regular touchstones – my pinboard, my other Mac screens, the files.

5. Goal set and don’t stop

James Thurber once said “Don’t get it right, just get it written.”. I’m with James. I bash out a draft as quickly as I can, whilst still endeavouring to incorporate the main ideas and pieces of information I’ve pulled together. Don’t get sucked into obsessing about your first sentence. Draft the piece from top to toe, you can always fill in the gaps later when editing.

There are many sites with writing tips for authors, plus reams of books on the subject. It seems authors like nothing else than to write about writing. Try searching Google for ‘writing tips’, ‘writers block’ or ‘writing discipline’. I particularly like item one from the post 10 Tips for Achieving Your Writing Goals on theadventurouswriter.com, where Mark Richard offers his ideas for achieving writing goals:

“Take action immediately. If you postpone the startup date of writing your first novel or pitching ideas to editors, you begin the process of procrastination and avoidance. These goal killers must be conquered! You must step forward with courage. It’s frightening when you set writing goals, because you risk embarrassment and the possibility of failure. Courage means doing it anyway; remember that taking action builds confidence.”

You too, and me come to think of it, “must step forward with courage”.

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