Pomodoro and Procrastination

by +J. Lea Lopez 

If you've been hanging around our little slice of the Internet for a while, you may remember when I created and shared some slow writing memes last year. Including this one:

It's true that I tend to take longer to write a draft, and I favor a cleaner first draft that doesn't need as much rewriting and hair-pulling in the editing stage. It works for me as a writer, and maybe it works for you, too. But in addition to being a fun way to show solidarity with my fellow slow writers, this graphic I made hides a deep, dark, shameful secret...

I'm a world-class procrastinator.

Oh, the shame! The horror!  But it's true. When left completely to my own devices, my time management skills leave a little something (maybe a lot of something) to be desired. When I worked retail, time management wasn't really an issue. There were schedules and timelines to stick to, and there were only so many hours I could work in a day. And there were consequences. I obviously wanted to keep my job. But as a self-employed, self-published author, the only thing keeping me accountable for self-imposed deadlines is a Candy Crush-playing, dog-cuddling, daydreaming, deadline-shifting procrastinator who needs more coffee. AKA me. And to be honest, I don't really get mad at myself when I say this story is going to be finished by this date, and then that date comes and goes. I'm not going to fire me. Sure, you can argue that I'm losing sales or... something? But I'm too damn laid back for that. Those kinds of consequences just roll right off my back and I keep doing whatever I'm doing. Or not doing.

Obviously this is not the best long-term business strategy. I've been a hardcore procrastinator for literally as long as I can remember. Dr. Phil or some other (probably every other) pop psychologist on TV used to say that you wouldn't continue a bad behavior or habit if you weren't getting some kind of payoff from it. Perhaps if I had bombed even one major class project or assignment after leaving it until the last minute, I wouldn't be such a procrastinator. But the truth is, it has always worked for me. The looming deadline gave me the kick in the pants I needed to focus and get the work done. I do some of my best work at the very last minute, which I suppose is why I keep doing it, even when I drive myself nuts.

I'm getting to the tomato sauce part of this post title, honestly. As a way to (supposedly) increase my productivity and keep me accountable, several writing friends and I have an ongoing Facebook group chat going throughout the day to discuss word counts, daily and weekly goals, and to swap knowledge about various writing, publishing, and marketing things we have going on. It helped a little bit. Sometimes. At first. The act of saying to my friends, "I'm going to get some writing done" made me want to do it so I wouldn't look foolish. But that didn't last long, and now the shame factor isn't much of a factor at all. "Ha ha, just kidding, I've accomplished nothing/very little/only part of what I wanted to do," quickly became my battle cry. You might hypothesize that I don't place the same value in myself, my own time, and my work that I do in other people and other things and therefore don't feel that time spent writing is important... but let's not psychoanalyze, mmkay? *gets too close to truth, shifts focus to something else... dog picture time!*

Cuddling > writing, amirite??

Ahem, where was I? That's right, the pomodoro part. My group of friends introduced me to the Pomodoro Technique and a cell phone timer app. You may be used to pomodoro on your pasta, but this is a time management technique, named after a tomato-shaped kitchen timer. The basic gist of it is you set a timer and do 25 minutes of focused work, followed by a short break. Repeat. There's a bit more to it, and you can check out a short video here about mastering the technique, but so far I've only used it to help me focus and do some short writing sprints. I downloaded an app on my phone and made sure to tell it to disable my phone's Internet connection so that I wouldn't be distracted by the beeps and noises of emails syncing, or Twitter, or whatever. Twenty-five minutes felt like a much easier time limit than, say, an hour, if you're familiar with the 1k1hr sprinting method. I was skeptical, since very little seems to keep me focused on getting words down without one of those elusive sparks of inspiration. But after a few rounds, I discovered I liked it. And it worked! Some rounds are slower or faster than others, but I can get in a few hundred words in 25 minutes usually, which is still slow by many standards, but just right for me, considering I would sometimes struggle to get much more than that in an hour. I know that I need to keep going until I hear the timer go off. Maybe it's that clear goal of waiting for a timer combined with a more manageable time frame that makes it work for me. I'm not sure exactly what the psychological trick of it is, and as long as it keeps working for me, I don't care.

So if you too are a procrastinator looking to reform, or if you just need a better time management tool, grab yourself a kitchen timer, or download an app (the one I downloaded is called ClearFocus: Pomodoro), and try the Pomodoro Technique. And maybe make some pasta for dinner. Mmm... pomodoro sauce...

Do you struggle with procrastination and time management? Have you had success using this technique? Tell us your thoughts in the comments below!

J. Lea López, also known as Jennifer, Jen, J, JLo, jello, and the Mistress with the Red Pen, is a romance and erotica author who strives to make you laugh at, fall in love with, cry over, and lust after the characters she writes. She also provides copyediting services with a special focus on the sexy stuff.

Resolved

by Sophie Perinot

Writers, like non-writers, often mark the New Year by committing themselves to a collection of resolutions, usually in the form of an earnestly drawn-up laundry list of thing we want to accomplish to forward our work in progress and our careers.  For example, “write 2,000 words a day” is, I would posit, the writer’s equivalent of the average person’s “lose ten pounds.”

I am skeptical of the power New Year’s resolutions.  I think they have, for the most part, forgotten where they came from, and so have we.  They have become nothing more than vague promises we make ourselves at a particularly optimistic moment (when the world is new again and everything seems possible).  And if we don’t keep them later. . . well. . .

Yep.  Pretty darn useless.

This year I suggest that we—wordsmiths by trade—cast our minds back to the root of the term resolution—the word “resolve.”  Resolve is powerful indeed.  True resolve impresses and gets things done.  Take a look at this definition (from Merriam-Webster):

Resolve (noun): 1) fixity of purpose: resoluteness.

Pow! That’s an old-fashioned, commanding concept.  I sit up straighter just reading the definition, don’t you?

So, instead of picking half-dozen specific writing resolutions in these first days of 2013, jotting them down and promptly forgetting where I’ve stuck them, I am going to rediscover my fixity of purpose (I know I set it down somewhere—maybe behind the pile of research books).  When I locate it, I am going to wield it like a sword and treat my work with the urgency and determination that true resoluteness demands.  If (or rather when because set backs are inevitable) I fail to meet the weekly goals for my latest manuscript I am going to recognize my justifications of this failure for what they are—excuses.  Pitiful excuses.  I am going to remind myself that this is a job.  A real work ethic and not just good intentions are needed to get it done.

That’s how I am starting 2013—as a taskmaster who knows true resolve generally involves perseverance, suffering and even self-castigation, NOT as a starry-eyed, optimist who believes that wishing something done will make it so.  How about you?

Sophie Perinot's debut novel, THE SISTER QUEENS (which tells the story of two 13th century sisters who became the queens of England and France) released in 2013.  She is currently working on her Sophomore novel, a task that requires considerable resolve. You can find Sophie at home here, or on Facebook at her author page or the page for her novel.  She is also active on twitter.

On Procrastination

by Riley Redgate

Hello there, FTWA readers!

It's Wednesday. I have two final exams on Thursday. I have another one on Friday. This is a blog post.

Let's talk about procrastination!

Do you know why procrastination is easy? I do.

It's not scary.

The actual writing part of life almost always involves some element of I'm Not Good Enough. Editing, drafting while knowing you'll have to go back and edit 90% of what's coming out of your fingers, querying, synopsizing - the whole deal involves self-criticism. And procrastination, happy activity that it is, does not. It allows you to think of your work in the positive terms of the abstract, even whilst you cheerfully shirk it. Malformed sentences go away. Characterization issues disappear into the ether. And plot holes? What plot holes?

Procrastination happens because we're scared of what could happen in its stead. We could spend hours on a single scene and emotionally exhaust ourselves. Worse, we could spend hours on a single scene and then realize that scene needs deletion. We could rewrite our query four times and still realize it's not good enough.

For example, let's take my current mode of procrastination. I have not looked back over the book that I should have looked over several times by now for Friday's exam. Why? Because I'm scared I'll get to it and realize I need to memorize a million things I don't already know. I'm trusting in what I've already done rather than rediscovering what I've done and what I need to fix. Procrastinating, I can say, hey! You know what? I know a lot of things. Here's what I've learned. A lot of things, right? I'll be fine, eh?

After I finish writing this blog post, I will read the book in question. And, odds are, I shall rapidly discover I have yet some things to brush up on.

So the cure to procrastination? Make it as scary as going back to your unfinished draft.

Here's why you should be scared of procrastination:

1) You'll regret it later. Nothing's less satisfying than going to bed thinking about what you could have done with your day, and what you did instead of what you could have done.

2) You don't have all the time in the world. You have time. But not infinite time. You have people you love and places to go; you have books to read and other activities in which to participate. You do not have a million hours to spend faffing about on Twitter etc. while your WIP languishes in that other window.

3) It makes the writing harder. What if you get out of practice? What if you forget quite how your MC's particular voice sounds? These are problems not-unheard of. Coming back to an unfinished draft after an overlong break is laborious, and disrupts rhythm, and could be disadvantageous for quality itself.

4) It makes writing feel like work. I mean, come on. What other types of things do you put off? Studying for exams. (Ahem. -averts eyes-) And like, emailing your least favorite relative, and filing taxes, probably. But writing? Writing is a joy to you. That's why you do it. Whether you get an adrenaline rush, a deep satisfaction, a further knowledge about the human condition - whatever. You have a reason to be doing what you're doing. What you don't have is a reason to delay it.

Thus concludes another blog post that sounds more like a lecture/chastisement than it probably should. -sigh- Sorry about that. I'll blame it on finals week stress ... and now I'm off to review Aristotle's Poetics!

Bonne chance! Your WIP loves and awaits you!

Riley Redgate, enthusiast of all things YA, is a bookstore-and-Starbucks-dweller from North Carolina attending college in Ohio. She blogs here and speaks with considerably more brevity here.