practicing the act of writing

As I sat down to write today, I began to feel the painful edge of frustration creep in. This happens to me often. I love immediate gratification and despise delaying it, so when something doesn’t come easily to me, my inner dill pickle takes over and my usual positive demeanor diminishes, as does my productivity.

While I am usually able to snap out of it pretty easy, my life would be so much more enjoyable and productive if I could transform my inner dill pickle into something positive, so that my precious time and energy is not wasted (and I am more enjoyable to be around).

When I find myself in dill pickle mode, I find that the following tricks help me reset and get back to writing:

1)   Be still. This means I immediately stop what I am doing (usually this means to stop researching). When writing, it is easy for me to get side tracked, i.e., start looking at other blogs, rethink my design ideas, rethink what platform I am using, etc. etc. By taking a moment to be still, I am able to approach the task at hand with more clarity.  

2)   Take a break. While it is easy to resist breaks in the name of productivity. Nothing is more productive than standing up and taking a moment to get a drink of water, chat with someone, walk around the house/ office so that I am refreshed when I sit back down to write.

3)   Re-evaluate. Usually when I am being a dill pickle, it is because I am stuck and/or can’t make a decision about something. By re-evaluating the direction I am headed, and allowing myself to change directions if I think it will be better/ easier in the long run, I am able to move forward a lot faster than if I keep on banging my head against a wall that I know will just lead me to give up. (For example, I originally decided to launch this blog using tumblr, however after reviewing how others were using it, and knowing that I would have to maintain two blogs at the same time using separate platforms, I knew it would be much easier to stick with Blogger since I am more familiar with it and more likely to follow through with maintaining both blogs).

4)   Focus. After re-evaluating, focus all your energy on the task at hand in order to get the job done.

5)   Get the job done. In this case, getting the job done meant finishing my Monday post and figuring out how to share my blog. While I couldn’t quite figure out how to add share buttons to my tumblr blog, I did figure out how to add them to Blogger. So in the spirit of actually doing something…. I moved “Musing the Day Away” on tumblr to blogger and renamed it: “The Shedding of a Former Self: The Kat Hyatt Story.”

Tip of the Day: Get over it, and do what works for you.