Being Your Own Worst Enemy

[alanajoli]

I was having a conversation with my chiropractor yesterday and talking about my writing. In response to my saying something about how I was delaying on a project, she made the comment, "Well, don't be your own worst enemy."

This struck me as pretty sage advice. There are a lot of moments when I'm the only person standing in my way--and yet, I still stand there, just hanging out on the path to success and not going anywhere. (Or, at least, the path to accomplishing something with my day. Success is subjective, after all.) I've been trying really hard to follow amieroserotruck's excellent example, which I blogged about last week, in writing at least one sentence a day. To be honest, it's not a fun way to write. But rather than sit down and write more than a sentence or two, I read books I've been meaning to read, work on other projects, and generally do other things that get in the way of my progress. It's not that any of these are bad decisions--and everyone deserves a little time off now and again--but they are decisions that keep me in the struggling stage with the new WIP.

At any rate, today I'm going to start trying to stop being my own worst enemy, starting with getting on top of that project I talked to my chiropractor about. And who knows? Maybe tomorrow I'll write a whole page. ;)

Comments

[smerwin29.livejournal.com]

The good part about writing at least one sentence a day is, for many people, that once they write that first sentence, they keep writing--thus turning one sentence a day into 100 sentences a day. And downtime is oh so important too!

Also, think of it this way. If you are your own worst enemy, it means there isn't someone else out there plotting your doom! :-D

[alanajoli.livejournal.com]

Wow, so that really is paranoia after all? They're *not* out to get me? :)

I've found that the one sentence turning into several is pretty typical for me, though I'm nowhere near hitting the 100 mark. This is new territory for me in more ways than one, so it's fun exploring and figuring out whether some techniques will actually work for me. But like I said to Jeff above, if I weren't committed to doing *something,* I'd likely still have nothing written down.