Note to Self

I realise I’m procrastinating when I find myself wiping down my keyboard with a cotton bud.

Don’t try it at home. It just spreads dust from one key to the other.

When I set myself an amount of words to write, I get those words written. If I don’t set myself a deadline, no one else will.

I’m fifty words away from completing my target but I’ve stopped to play with a cotton bud.

It’s because I’m feeling hypersensitive about a comment I received on my blog.

The reader wrote that he didn’t agree with my recent views and that I was getting sloppy.

It’s good that people have different opinions and express them. In fact I wish the author of the comment would get a blog going so I could read what he has to say more fully.

Alas, not everyone has time to write a blog. You’d be surprised how many hours they take.

Which is why it’s irritating when a reader only comments when they don’t like the post.

Criticism doesn’t succeed in its aims without encouragement.

My writers group (who meet monthly) is ruthless with their feedback but when I leave, though I may want to temporarily burn my manuscript, I feel good because I know and they know it’s because I can do better.

To help me get through my novel, I began the ‘Enough is Enough Writing Group’ with a fellow writer, who was fed up of procrastinating. It consists literally in the two of us getting together every two weeks and reading through each other’s chapters.

The energy that our meetings produce and the motivation we feel afterwards is enough for us to power through to the next stage.

I really recommend to anyone struggling through a project, whatever it may be, to join forces with someone like-minded.

But choose wisely.

If you find yourself coming away from a session with them, feeling as flat as road kill in the middle of the motorway, then they are not the right people for you.

Find someone who’ll make you fight for what you want, not someone who’ll leave you pondering the efficacy of a cotton bud.