That Would Make a Great Story, Let Me Write It Down

That's OK, I'll Remember

I have many beautifully covered notebooks, random pages in multiple calendars, torn pieces of scrap paper, and numerous notes on my phone, all containing great ideas for stories.  An idea will hit me and I experience momentary excitement as I start to think about how the story might begin. I take some time to think about the main character and his or her quirks as the first scene begins to play out in my head. This is a fun couple of minutes until whatever I was doing before the great story idea popped into my head interrupts the creative process. 

I learned a long time ago to write these ideas down because no matter how great the idea seems and I'm positive I could never possibly forget it, time has shown I almost always will.

Back when I was a young mother, I had dreams of writing books that were published.  It was as simple as that.  They didn't need to be best sellers.  I just wanted to know what it felt like to see something that I had written on a shelf in a bookstore.  

Those notebooks I spoke of earlier first contained ideas for children's stories I wanted to write for my two girls. Before bed, I read books to them and noticed, from my perspective,  how easy it looked to write children's books.  It was a fun idea that only made it as far as jotting down a couple stories.

See, part of my procrastination comes from lacking the know-how to execute a great idea, and if that information isn't readily available to me or if I don't know somebody who might be able to help me right away I lose interest and motivation, and will usually give up on the idea quickly.  

Instead of having fun with the process of creating characters and bringing them to life in a story, I bogged myself down with thoughts of, "Who will I get to publish my book", "Who will I get to illustrate", "How many words does it have to be", "Who's going to edit my books", "How much money could I make".  These are all good questions, but in their appropriate time.  All the time I wasted worrying about those things I lost the excitement for the story, and at that point, I was content with just writing the idea down and telling myself I would get to it later.  I believed I would too because, you know, it was such a great story idea.

Fast forward 20 years and here I am.  Using a blog platform to try to motivate myself to do this thing that I find incredibly fun and rewarding but still have trouble seeing through to the end.  

Whether or not I ever get a book I've written published in my lifetime I will receive tremendous satisfaction by pressing the "Publish" button after each blog post I write.

Thank you for joining me on this experimental journey to conquer my procrastination and complete the many stories I have started and have yet to finish.  I will also post new stories as incomplete works and publish chapters as I write them. I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I will undoubtedly enjoy writing them.  That's the plan anyway. 😀

What causes you to procrastinate and how do you move past it?