…And also stalling the ending of my next novel!

…Procrastination, yes, I know. But, hey, at least I’m doing something productive with it this time, right?

Anyway… yep, I’m back at it. I’m not sure why, exactly, that I started up to poetry flow once more… but, after a solid two (or maybe three…) weeks of increasing increments of writing procrastination and a good churn out of, say, six-ish poems by this point in time… I think I can finally declare that I’m delving into this beautiful art once more.

And, if you couldn’t tell by my wording in that whole darned’ed statement… well, then, check yourself before yaself.

(Oh, no… it’s well past my bedtime and I’m in too much of a good insomnia-tic mood right now… haha.)

But, here’s how my writing process usually goes (with novels and longer works): I start off with a random idea that probably comes to me either while daydreaming or dreaming about daydreaming, write that idea down, take anywhere from 1 to 120 months to cultivate it, begin actually writing through the idea for about one full chapter, stop, procrastinate… come back, regularly write the rest of the entirety of the book from chapter one to the one about fifty to one-hundred pages from the ending, stop again, procrastinate again (this time for much longer)… and then, finally, return to the unfinished work and whip it into a completely finished draft before editing it a thousand times!

I literally couldn’t describe that any better with any other words.

And so, right now… I’m in that second phase of procrastination that seemingly takes foreverrrrr to get over. During that time, though, I always switch my gears over to another project of some sort… usually the first chapter of my next big book (and then that first round of procrastination is actually be going back and finishing the last one… usually). And there’s probably a good reason behind why I do the procrastinating… A.K.A. I’m too nervous to actually finish the thing and feel like I’m going to mess up the beauty of the final page and don’t want it to be over because I’ve worked on it so long and it’s my pride and glory and I don’t know what I’m going to do when I don’t have it to work on (even though I do… like the next book that I already started while procrastinating… but I still tell myself that). But, you know, that’s just the underlying thinking in the back of my brain the whole time during this process.

But… I’ve been doing this writing thing long enough that I know the procrastination is coming… so why can’t I just, like, stop it?

Hm, yeah, that’s a good question.

I’d rather go watch The Office than think of the answer to it, though.

Haha…

But, really, now I’m going to turn the tables over to y’all. Especially those successful procrastination machines out there…

How does one beat procrastination… or avoid it all together?

Any advice could really help me right now, people. My book is counting on it.

And, you know, poetry is nice and all to write… but I so know it’s just a distraction from my main work right now. And as much as I want to use it as an excuse to not finish my book… I have to fight it.

I gotta beat this procrastination.

…And then I’ll finish the poems, too.

Help me!

-iKari