Deadlines and Procrastination

As any of you who have read my previous posts will know, I'm not a huge fan of editing.  In fact, if I can find an excuse to not edit (such trying to decide on a new desktop for my computer...because that's oh so important...) I will do it.  Take, for instance, this very blog post.  While I may have to have a blog post up by midnight tonight (or risk being turned into a pumpkin...don't ask...) I didn't need to do it right now.  I am, though, because I turned the page and stared in dismay at all the purple marks.

Another thing I've never been good with is arbitrary deadlines.  I like to set a dead line for editing (Like, say, the first ten chapters done by the fifth of December) then let it pass by with a shrug and perhaps a comment about how I can make up the time later.

So now it's the 18th, and I'm still working on those first ten chapters.  (Yes, I do realize how pathetic that is.)  Unfortunately I happened to go on the ABNA site the other day and realized that I do, in fact, have a very solid deadline.  One that I have been ignoring, and basically telling myself that I have lots of time to do it.  When I saw that January 23rd, suddenly I realized that my math wasn't working.  It may seem like a lot of time, but I have a lot to edit.  And putting it off was just going to mean that I would end up with a second rate book in the contest, rather than something I can show off with pride.

Last year my submission was the first novel I ever wrote.  I wrote it during nano, in the first two weeks.  It was just barely over the 50k mark, and I edited it in a month before submitting it to the contest.  I made it into the top 250 of 5000 in the YA section of the contest.  This year, I wanted to do better.

I was doing well, too.  The book was written over two months, with me giving it  more thought than I did the first.  It had far more planning and world building in it.  I even submitted the first few chapters to my critique group and have beta readers all lined up.  Unfortunately I put off the editing for so long, that I'm now in the same boat I was in last year.  This is going to be one of the quickest editing jobs ever, and it's all because of Procrastination.

There's really nothing I can do about that now, though.  I have to just get down to it and get this book edited.  I have to stop procrastinating!

So I did the only thing I could think of.  I gave myself a deadline, then asked other people to hold me accountable.  My beta readers, to be precise.  I told them when I wanted to have my chapters to them by, and told them they had free reign to bug me for them, criticize me if they were late, and generally make a nuisance of themselves until those first ten chapters (which will end up being 9 chapters, as two of the chapters were amalgamated...) in their drop boxes.

I think it's working.  I'm not done (obviously) but I'm much closer than I would have been if I didn't know there were people who were going to yell at me if I didn't get these chapters sent out by midnight.  But what I need is for someone to take away all of the things I use for procrastination.  This would just be an experiment, as I'm fairly certain that, even with everything taken away, I could still find a way to procrastinate, but it might work for a while.

Any takers?

Didn't think so.  Oh well, time to get back to editing now.  See you all next week!

Christmas Shopping and Editing

I went Christmas shopping today.  One thing you should know about me is that I actually hate shopping.  No, this isn't something that most people would assume, seeing as how most women do.  But what I hate most is Christmas shopping.  The crowds, the noise.  You can never find exactly what you want, and sometimes you don't even know what you want.  By the end of the day, you're tired, cranky, certain no one is going to like their gifts and broke.

Today was certainly no different.  I found myself growing grumpy when we could find presents for one year olds, and presents for three year olds, but do you think we could find one for a two year old?  Everything was either too old, too young, or far far too expensive.  It made me miss the days of a tub of play-do making kids happy, even if I was one of those kids.

If that wasn't bad enough, then there was the fact that we didn't even end up buying all of our presents because we honestly didn't know what to get a couple of people.  Meaning that we will have to go back out instead of being completely done...

So why am I telling you this when I'm supposed to be talking about writing?  I have always maintained the editing was my least favorite thing to do in the world.  I avoid it at all cost and usually manage to put it off far longer than I want.  Today I got up thinking about how I could avoid editing for even longer because I would get to go out Christmas shopping, and surely that was better than editing, as I hate editing so much.

I have to admit that I was wrong.  Christmas shopping is not better than editing.  By the time I got home I was wishing that I had spent the day on the computer getting some editing done.  (For the record, I got absolutely no editing done, and I probably wont.  This blog post was a last minute thing and didn't even manage to make it up for the deadline...I'll do better next week I promise!!)

That's got to say something about shopping, when I spent the day wishing I could be working on my book rather than trying to figure out what everyone wants.

For the record, my characters are now complaining about how I ignored them today.  As if I never give them attention.  Thankfully critique group starts up again next week, and I can forget about Christmas for a couple of hours while other people rip apart my writing.  It'll be awesome!!

I guess I just have to learn how to balance my life better.  In November I got lost in the writing, so now I'm rushing to finish everything for Christmas.  Next year I'm going to have to figure out a way to not completely ignore real life during November so that I'm not stuck trying to do it all in the early days of November.

I think I'll just do all my shopping online next year... 

A commitment

Now that NaNoWriMo is officially over, I have decided to recommit myself to my blog.  In November I took on the insane challenge of a blog post a day.  Unfortunately that it not something I can keep up with on a permanent basis.  For one thing, by the end of the month I no longer had any topics to write about.  And without any writing to complain about, I'm going to have even less to write about.

Instead, after coming to the conclusion that I want to post more often, I have decided to post once a week.  That day is going to be Sundays, starting today.  (Yes.  I do realize that it's almost midnight and I should really have done this earlier, but as I was at a hockey game with my boyfriends parents, it was a little difficult.)

My commitment is to have it posted every Sunday no later than midnight.  I cannot guarantee that they will all be the greatest posts in the world, but I can guarantee that they will help you to follow my incredibly exciting journey to being published.  (2012 will be the epic year of querying.)

The next year will include a submission to ABNA (Amazon Breakout Novel Award), NaNoEdMo, and the sending out of my first query letters.  Therefore you can expect to hear all about how much I hate editing...why I hate my characters...and the arrival of my first rejection letter.

I know you're just as excited as me, and I hope that hearing about my journey will help you to start (or continue) yours.  But, if all this blog brings you are a few laughs, I'm happy with that too.