Overcoming Temptation

It’s easy to succumb. Too easy. Just like it’s easy to get distracted with social media, blogs, reading, and checking your email. Some days, writing feels like it’s the worst thing in the world. You sit down at your computer and suffer from yet another case of blank-page syndrome. Plus, your keyboard is completely unreliable and most likely misses several letters. You have no idea if a plot even exists, the characters seem bland, and the story doesn’t seem to matter.

But it does. Those minutes spent hacking away at your novel are painful, yes, and maybe you do have plot deficiencies, and your characters could be more multifaceted, and right now that’s not going to happen. That’s disappointing, true, but you should still continue. Yeah, Facebook can be a lot more fun than trying to outline a coherent plot, but at the end of the day, Facebook doesn’t matter like your story does. It can be incredibly frustrating, but when you look back at what you’ve done a year from today, Farmville won’t matter. Your novel will.

So, maybe you’ve been procrastinating. No one’s going to force you to write, so you have to make yourself. You have the willpower, so why don’t you write? My characters aren't good. I'm too busy. So many other writers are better than me. Excuses. It doesn’t have to be good, and it doesn’t even have to have a point. If you’re a writer and you’ve read this far, you’d better write something down.

You say you write novels, so why are you stopping yourself? It doesn’t take much, just a few minutes a day. You say you’re a writer, so you should write.

 That is, if you think it’s worth it. I think it is. Make the choice today.