Pen and Paper. My favorite way to write my first drafts. Somehow writing feels more real if it’s in a spiral notebook with a brightly colored pen. I used to buy those expensive journals, but could never write anything worthy of such a pretty journal. Then I started buying one subject spirals on sale during the back to school sales in August. I could get  20 for 2 dollars. Such a deal. I still use those, one a month for morning pages, three handwritten pages daily about nothing in particular. I consider them a warm up . I play oboe, and there is no music without a 15-20 minute warm up, same with writing.  I think the pages take me back to my 4th grade writer self, when after reading Harriet the Spy, I began keeping notebooks on the life around me. This did not make me popular with my peers until 7th grade, when the daily soap opera I wrote and took to physical science every day was the surprise breakout hit of the middle school. I would talk on the phone with my “editor” Maryann for an hour every night before bringing my carefully printed-with-carbon-paper masterpieces each morning. 

Procrastination. That is the subject in this month of daily blogging exercise. So far, I have managed to blog nearly on time everday. Yay, go me. But since this month has started, with the exception of an outline, I have done exactly zero words on my novel. I am a procrastinator, hear me roar, a little later.

C.S. Lewis was pretty famous for the opposite of procrastinating, He wrote somewhere that he always did everything immediately. Where is the fun in that? I am more of the Douglas Adam’s school. He loved deadline, and the sound of them whooshing past. So why do I procrastinate?

Perfectionism. Fear of not being perfect. Not sure where I picked up this disease, but the closest thing that I have come to finding a cure has been the writings of Anne Lamott and Julia Cameron. It is probably the disease and procrastination is just a symptom. I only hope it isn’t fatal because it kills creativity and work.