RSS

Some Days I Just Don’t Know Where to Begin

17 Jun

0511-1009-1319-0462_Black_and_White_Cartoon_of_a_Stressed_Out_Guy_with_the_Word_Overload_clipart_image_thumb[1]

I got up this morning at 6 a.m. and sat down at my desk…then I spent about an hour staring at my computer screen trying to decide where to begin. I have several ghosting projects, my regular articles, a book I’m trying to edit and one I’m trying to finish….and yesterday was the last day of the school year. Needless to say I was feeling a bit overloaded.

So what’s a writer to do when it seems there is an avalanche of work to do? Over the years I have developed a few techniques to help me when I get overwhelmed. Some of them are from friends and other writers who also have found themselves staring at the screen as though it was a foreign object and some are my own tried and true methods.

1. Walk away – I know, I know….but you have work to do…I get that, but sometimes it is better to get up and do something completely different. I got up this morning and did laundry. If anything was going to make me want to go back to writing it is the laundry. (that and dusting)
2. Read – I find that sometimes I just need to be inspired by another writer. I pick up a book and read and it seems to help me get back on track.
3. Work on something unrelated – When I am overwhelmed with projects that I HAVE to get done, I work on something I want to get done. Sometimes it helps to step into a project totally unrelated to what has to be done today.
4. Make a list – I am a list person. I love lists. I often sit down and write down what I have to get done and then knock it out one thing at a time. My saying…one dragon at a time.
5. Take a day off – Every now and again it is a good thing to just take a day off. I have to get away sometimes to remember what it is that I love about what I do. It’s okay….the work will be there when you get back.
These are just a few suggestions and I am sure that other writers have more. Please share those ideas with the rest of us. We can all use a little help from time to time.

 
© The Writer’s Advice, 2014. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited.

 

 

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out / Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out / Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out / Change )

Google+ photo

You are commenting using your Google+ account. Log Out / Change )

Connecting to %s

 
%d bloggers like this: