By Punch Procrastination in the Face
It’s Not Easy
It’s not easy staring at a blank screen with the words desperate to get out of your head and into a cohesive sentence, so much so that the observation was once eloquently expressed by the best of them, Stephen King, when he compared the first ten minutes at the blank page to smelling a dead fish. This is from the man that writes at least 2,000 good words every day, and over 65 novels (at last count). We should take a lesson from the feet of the professionals. Procrastination is not just for the newbies or the pros; it hits all of us at one time or another.
Bring an Open Mind
But it doesn’t have to stop there. One sentence, one fleeting thought can open up a whole world of words that spill out of space to fill the space, and most of the time, with a little tweaking, the sentences actually make sense. The goal is to get to the point where, through diligent free writing, we can get out of overthinking the content and down to the business of that first, hopefully manageable draft. Sometimes, it’s surprising that we know more than we think we know.
Brain and Finger Memory
Sometimes, in the quiet, the rhythm takes over and the stroke of the keys sounds as natural as breathing. We leave that headspace of getting hung up on time, or even awareness of the task at hand; it becomes secondary to how the story in us almost, if left to its own devices, effortlessly unfolds.
Most will agree, there should be a framework to get started, but it’s never tight, it’s never constricting. In fact, many great writers talk about not even going into a book with a solid structure in mind, called pantser, or flying by the seat of your pants.
Just a Thought
The familiar tap of the keyboard sometimes is enough.
Yale medicine says that,
“The human brain consists of 100 billion neurons and over 100 trillion synaptic connections. There are more neurons in a single human brain than stars in the Milky Way!”
