Write (and Procrastinate)

If you’re part of the scrapbooking community, I’m sure most of you are familiar with Ali Edwards’s One Little Word class or the concept of One Little Word to be your key for the rest of the year.

I’m going to play with that concept, and rather than using that word all year long, I am just going to apply it for this first month — January 2012. I’m borrowing this variation from Kyeli Smith at the World-Changing Writing Workshop on Facebook.

My one little word for January is WRITE.

What am I going to do with this word during the month of January?

• redesign my Writing and Designing for the Web class by applying concepts I’m learning in another online class about Power Teaching
• create at least two scrapbook layouts each week. If you’ve looked at my scrapbook pages, you know I do a LOT of journaling. I love to write the story behind the photographs.
• write at least two blog posts on this blog each week relating to something creative I’m doing.
• spend more time writing in the business writing class I am teaching this semester. It’s a hybrid class, so we spend half the class online. I want to really increase my participation in those online weeks — to create the same kind of presence online as I do in the classroom. I find this isn’t so hard in my entirely online classes. But the hybrid classes really throw me for a loop.
• take time to do more writing and documenting in general. I’ve been trying to write a book for the last 7 years, but it just boils down to procrastination. I don’t set aside the real time I need to write, because I’m busy doing something else — oh, like cleaning the bathroom or decluttering a closet. You know, the “emergencies” that get in the way of your creativity.

I start this today. I am taking an hour from my (procrastination) time to write, sharing my plan, and exposing it to daylight. Thank you, Kyeli and the Motivation Monday group.

All these writing goals are going to require that I guard my Me Time closer. Especially this month, where I am losing three full days to gymnastics meets. I do a lot of writing at the meets, in between video taping and chatting with the other parents. There, most of my writing is about the meets for my girls — a Smashbook-like journal. I need to stop discount that writing — it’s writing too.

Back to my point: I need to guard my time. This may require that I take more time at the Coffee Shop, or that I shoo my kids out of the upstairs in the evenings when they aren’t at gymnastics practice.

The bottom line is this: I will need to guard my time from procrastination. That’s going to be the hardest part. Now that I’ve said it three times, maybe I will actually follow through!

If any of you have suggestions for fighting against procrastination, I’d love to hear about them in the comments. That, and if you have a word that you’ll be using to inspire you this year, this month, this week, or even just for today.

Tags: Just Do Something Creative, writing