Posts Tagged ‘Procrastination’

The last few days, attempting to take my mind of things, I’ve really been throwing myself into my work. So, it’s not exactly surprising that I’ve gotten so much done, including a full four-page novel synopsis completed in record time.

(Record time – Not just because it was completed in less than two days, but also because I’ve never finished one before.)

I took some time out today to visit an old past-time – procrastination.

So, here’s my synopsis in Wordle format… Enjoy.

Try Wordle out for yourself.

Work work work.

So much work to catch up on, so much more to do.

What is a person to do when they have so much work? Go through it? Begin with something small and work through it until it’s all complete? Do the more interesting projects first and work through to the harder stuff?

Or ignore it all and stuff around learning how to create anaglyphes?

Take a guess which way I went -

I wish the real world was in 3D.

I’ve created a monster. An awesome awesome monster.

It seems that the good people of Procrastination Productions got word of my work on the greatest literary masterpiece known to man – Uncle Fuzzies Bunny Cuddle Farm. and have already bought the option to film it.

_{*cough*millions*cough*}

Today they’ve released the first teaser poster -

They’ve also released a synopsis of the film. At first I was a little upset that they seemed to be giving away a lot of the story but it doesn’t really spoil too much of the surprises and there’s still plenty more to keep everyone watching.

Here it is –

In a post-apocalyptic future, a young sexy group of sexy survivors from the first wave of zombie attacks wash ashore on a remote tropical island. The group – A famous doctor, an amateur underwear model, a teenaged computer-whiz and a hip young television reporter – take refuge in an old abandoned fully furnished cottage.

Unbeknownst to the young sexy group, the remote tropical island is the home of a secret genetic research lab run by the infamous Dr Arnold Fuzzington. In an attempt to save humanity, the eccentric scientist has genetically recreated the recently extinct bunny as an alternate food source for the zombies… But before he can finish he needs some human guinea pigs for product testing…

To make matters worse for the sexy young survivors a bunch of the rabid ravenous rabbits, led by a super-smart cottontail, escape from their cages and begin hunting the group down, one by one, to satisfy their new genetically altered carnivorous cravings.

The sexy young group try to make their sexy getaway from the crazy mad scientist and the blood-thirsty bunnies by breaking out of the laboratory and heading into the islands massive jungle…

But what awaits them in the jungle is much more terrifying then they ever imagined.

Who will survive Uncle Fuzzies Bunny Cuddle Farm?

Phineas Black, Reginald P Winterbottom and Thadeus Dinsmore have all signed on to the film.

I’m especially excited about having someone like Reginald P Winterbottom starring in the movie. I think he’s perfect for the role of Mitchel Mitchelson, the wise Janitor who appears from nowhere to fill the group in on the history of the island and the doom that awaits them.

I must admit, I’m a little awestruck around him and can’t wait to start filming. ‘The Archer Affair’ is one of my all time favourites – “You want a puppy? You want a puppy? You can’t handle a puppy!”

Filming will begin shortly after the release/immediate success of the book in September 2012 and should be showing in your local cinema somewhere around 2013-2014 Christmas period.

I’ve created a monster. An awesome awesome monster. And now I have to write the bastard…

Adding to other pointless internet based activities designed to help me with my compulsive work avoidance I’m now on Tumblr.

I’m not sure what i can do with it that I can’t do between my Blog, twitter, twitpic or flickr but I’m sure I’ll find something.

Probably just post some crap.

Same as everywhere else.

So… Let’s not talk about how bad I did on NaNoWriMo this year. Instead, let’s look off into the distance until the subject changes…

Look behind you!! It’s a distraction!!

…and that’s pretty much how my November went.

I didn’t start out well at all. I didn’t get any work done at all the first day, I think because I had a long shift at work that day and yadda yadda… didn’t feel like it after that. As it turned out that was my second last day at work, the last complete shift.

The whole month was a little like that. A repetitive cycle of declaring that I would get the work done, that I would be a powerhouse of creativity, typing each day until my fingers bled.

But that never lasted long. Something would distract me and I was back to avoiding the keyboard and the blank page.

And then I got lost, choosing a style and direction for the story to be heading in, and I couldn’t continue without revisiting the drawing board.

And that’s where the final third of my November went…

Pretending I was at the drawing board.

However, on the up side, I did have a brand new and super-fantastic idea for another novel.

And isn’t that what NaNoWriMo is really about?

It’s not? It’s about writing 50,000 words in a month?

Shit.

AKA – A long post about what I’ve been up to lately…

Due to unforeseen circumstances, it looks as though I may not complete NaNoWriMo again this year.

I say “may” because there is still time left, and if I were to write just over 5000 words per day for the next week I might finish… Though a daily word target like that is highly unlikely to be hit around here. I haven’t even finished cleaning my place yet.

But I have come up with a list of ways to NOT get it finished. Here is the top ten things to do if you don’t want to finish NaNoWriMo this year.

Number Ten – Procrastinate.

…Obviously. Putting things off is a great way to not get things done and there are so many ways in which to do this.

A few personal favourites include watching Tv, cleaning, twittering, or even just going for a walk. All of these are a great way to push work away for a good chunk of time.

When all else fails, I like to use coffee as an excuse to put things off for a few minutes. This works well as I love my coffee and it sounds quite reasonable to say “I’ll get started right after a coffee”

Number Nine – Quit your job.

This sounds like a good idea, and in most ways it is.

But it won’t help you if you’re looking for more time to write. With so much extra time there is no longer any urgency to get any of it done. There is always time to do things later, you have all day tomorrow to catch up and next week you can work extra hard all week to make up for what you didn’t do this week.

I quit my job a few weeks ago. For other reasons, not to make time for writing, but I did think that with all that extra time and with a little tenacity I might be able to get a lot done.

That was until I…

Number Eight – Burn your hand

A great way to keep yourself from writing is to incapacitate yourself. And what could be more laborious and slow than typing with one hand? I mean apart from typing with no hands.

Nothing. Exactly.

So that’s what I did.

This happened to me one night while saving a box of kittens from a burning building, I was set upon by a group of ninjas and robots… and robot ninjas. They were all packing microwave meals, overcooked and only seconds out of the microwave. They demanded the box of kittens and when I didn’t comply they began throwing the meals at me. I managed to dodge most of them except one, which gave me second degree burns on the fingers and palm of my left hand.

I swear all that is true… Except the building, the kittens, the ninjas, the robots and the robot ninjas.

Number Seven – Watch Television.

I know I put this under number ten as a form of procrastination but there are two reasons that it needs it’s own spot.

For one, Television is the enemy of creativity. It really is.

Just by having it on you’re slowing yourself down, but added to that it dulls the creative process. I’ve always found that days in which I watch less television, I get alot more (and better) work done. Unfortunately television works much like any addiction in that unless you cut yourself off from it completely, including all access to it, then it will slowly and inevitably creep back into your life.

And I’m not ready to do that just yet.

Maybe after this season of Dollhouse has finished…

And the second reason this got it’s own entry – I accidentally miscounted and when I realised I didn’t have something for seven this was the first thing I came up with.

Number Six – Get Tattoed

A great way to spend a sunday afternoon, having needles stuck in your arm and/or leg and leaving deposits of ink there. Ah, good times.

Got two done myself last week… After six years since my last tattoo, I finally got around to getting some new ones.

And if you wanted to waste a little more time you can do what I did and walk to the tattoo parlor. Then, once the tattooing is done, you can find out that you’re in some backwards place that doesn’t have eftpos and so you’ll need to spend some more time walking to the shopping centre down the road. All in all, I spent about an hour and a half walking that day.

** A haircut could be substituted here if you prefer not to get tattooed… Or you can do what I did and get a haircut aswell.

Number Five – Buy a new computer

Who doesn’t like a new toy? Especially a nice big-ass super-expensive one like this –

This is my spanky new bitchin’ all-in-one touchscreen multimedia high definition yada yada computer. Ain’t she sweet? The touch screen is fun to play with. It’s heaps big monitor-wise and it’s all new and pretty.

The best thing about new toys like this?

You can spend all day just setting it up. Installing all your favourite programs and getting all the settings to how you like them and so on. I’m still not finished doing all that.

Number Four – Have a personal life

I’ve been trying this out lately. Doesn’t seem to be working for me. I’ve learned that there is nothing better to get in the way of writing than to have a personal life. Especially one as disasterous as mine.

People lie, people betray, people confuse and humiliate, people leave voids and people leave sorrow.

And you can’t control them or understand them like you do the characters you’re writing.

Bastards.

Number Three – Work on plot

Stop and think about your plot. Are things flowing as you want them too? Is the right information revealed at the right stage? Which scene goes next? Is the story moving to slow? Or too fast? And so on…

This is a great wait to slow down your writing. And if you really think about it, it may stop you altogether.

I did this. I decided to do a bit of plot planning, starting with listing all the scenes/elements that I wanted in my story. I came up with a list of 105 things, and it’s still growing… much more slowly now but still it’s growing.

Here’s a wordle of the list -

(because I haven’t posted a wordle in a while)

Anyway, working on the plot always seems to lead to –

Number Two – Starting from scratch.

Yeah, I’ve started to do this…

Well, I will when I’ve finished with everything else on this list. I’m still working on the plot a bit more. I’m going to put all of the elements/scenes that I listed in order and then write more on each one… and all the rest of it. You know how plotting is.

Writing is like eating soup with a fork, only you keep missing the bowl and stabbing yourself in the forehead.

Number One –

Instead of writing the story, write a top ten list about how to fail at writing the story.

To be fair, it’s not exactly a top ten list. It’s more of a ‘first ten things I thought of that I’ve been doing lately instead of working on NaNoWriMo’ list…

There are probably more that I could think of but I have some writing to do… So I’m going for a nap now.

Once upon a time there was…

Finally, there’s a cat that describes the way I’ve been feeling lately.

I’ve actually written most of this blog entry thingo before but I lost it somehow. The draft didn’t save or some crap. I hate losing stuff like that, it’s a pain in the behind. But when it’s not that important you can just shrug and say frak it. I once lost quite a lot of stuff, some of it was recovered from a backup I didn’t even know I’d had but there was a tonne of stuff lost as well. Sucks don’t it.

It’s surprising to me that almost half the year has passed already and as the title there and the cat suggest, it hasn’t been all that productive kind of year so far. In fact I’d goes as far as to say it was a downright unproductive year. At least as far as creative pursuits go.

But all that is about to change.

Stop laughing.

Quit it!

I understand some scepticism but laughing like a jackal is just downright uncalled for.

Bitch.

The thing is I have at least three projects that I’m both excited about and want to see completed. Three. Exactly. So why can’t I get them passed drawing board stage? I don’t know. I think I keep forgetting the first rule of first drafts (or in one projects case third attempt at rewriting), which is to not worry about writing it perfectly. The polishing comes later.

That and lack of focus, but I’ve covered that before.

And I’m kinda getting tired of these blog entries talking about how I’m getting anything done.

So here it is – By the next entry, something will be done. At least one stage of one project will be completed.

So check back in about a year or two for the next entry.

Wink.

And by that I don’t mean I can’t concentrate, I mean where the hell are my glasses?

And also,

I just can’t seem to concentrate.

The year is almost half over already and I’ve gotten absolutely nowhere.

I know what the problem has been though. Those damned Evil Ninja Penguins. Those bastards have been hounding my day in and day out. I can’t get a lick of work done because of them. I sit down, all ready to work and boom an Evil Ninja Penguin shows up and hits me with his nun chucks. I manage to fight them off each time, but by the time I have I’ve lost my train of thought and am unable to work.

That and other distractions.

Truth be told, I have some ideas floating around in that big black void between my ears but I just haven’t been able to make myself sit down at the computer long enough to do anything but make a quick note about it. One of the reasons for this is I sit down at the computer and immediately check if she is online… he says hinting at an underlying story which we won’t get into right now…

unfortunately she is the only thing I’m able to focus on at the moment. Which is leaving me in a downer of a mood not conducive to my creative efforts.

I don’t necessarily believe blonde jokes… though I did giggle. But it makes a point about futility. I really think I should just try and forget about… she…. and try to get back to what is achievable… probably…

Writing that novel which future reviewers will call Pure Genius and Amazingly Brilliant.

A Masterpiece.

Not that I’m setting my goals too high or anything.

But it’s time to stop thinking about… unachievable goals… such as she.

Starting… NOW

Okay… now

Now

…

So, that’s the gist of my current dilemma… Too much procrastinating. Too much worrying about the wrong things. Too little sitting down at the computer to actually get work done…. And so on.

There are so many ideas, some absolutely brilliant and exciting ideas but I just haven’t been able to get it together.

I have two current works at the forefront of my mind. One, which I’m sure I’ve mentioned quite a bit in previous entries, my apocalypse. I attempted to complete it at last years NaNoWriMo, but as I reached the 25,000 word mark (Or there-abouts) I realised that it would be much better told in first person than in third omnipotent as I was doing. So I threw it aside to begin again… which I haven’t really done anything about yet.

The other story is a somewhat futuristic/alien world type story about a man whom everyone believes saved the universe and had since died. But he didn’t and he hasn’t. What a twist! At least that’s how it’s looking at the moment. I’m not exactly sure what will happen when I get into it. I really only have plans for the first few chapters thus far.

There are plenty of other ideas all muddled up in there. Some stuff I’ve abandoned for a time, others which are still processing. Some I’m just collecting ideas on. A world or two that have been created but are still looking for a story to tell.

Work work work work. So much time, so little to do. Wait, reverse that.

It’s feeling good to actually be thinking about the work again.

Anyway, I think that’s about it for now. There’s probably more but this was mostly just for ramble and blah-blah-blah’s. So, I’m going to go now. I have plotting to do and a little editing, some attempts at first sentences to get started on… and…

And this made me snigger -

Where have I been? Where have I been?

I could ask you the same thing!!

Things haven’t been going so great over here at Del Casa De Jeremiah. I guess I’ve been having something of an existential crisis. You know, why are we here, what does it all mean, why does that chick want to be ‘just friends’, Where is my coffee ??

The same old stuff.

Although, it has been perfect weather for being miserable. Raining a lot of the time, overcast when it’s not. You can just take your bad mood, your heart ache and just wrap it around you like a warm blanket. Just make sure you put on your thick socks of rejection and the beanie of what ifs, otherwise you might catch a cold. And that would be depressing.

It seems to be the end of the Frog and the Potato.

Oh, internets, what am I supposed to do now?

. . . . .

. . .

.

At least it’s easter now, which gives me a good excuse to break diet and eat lots of chocolate.

In other news, there really isn’t much news.

I haven’t been writing a great deal. I even gave consideration to quitting writing, although I’ve come to realise that this too is an impossibility. It hurts me so, but still I love it.

I’ve gone back to the drawing board on the novel front. After finishing the first draft I tried to run through it to start picking out problems and so on, preparing for the second draft when I realised that it was a first person narrative all along. There are a few minor scenes that I like which won’t work in a first person narrative but alas, as the old saying goes ‘kill your babies’.

So I’m back to the mapping out of the plot, deciding whether or not to stick to the linear storytelling or go for a more ‘Chuck Palahniuk begin with the ending’ style. or something else entirely. I’m not exactly sure which, but it’ll most likely be somewhere between linear and something else entirely.

(Oh, it’s just begun to rain.)

What else have I been up to? What else, what else, what else?

There is some stuff coming up in the near future. If I stop moping around and get to it, it’ll be sooner. But what are the chances of that happening in this beautiful weather?

I think that’s about it for now. Let’s get to work people!!

(Well, you do that. I’m going back to the couch and my pillow.)