Procrastinating writing is helping me get so much done.  Hey those old photos aren’t going to upload themselves.  Nor are the old tax papers going to get shredded on their own. I make the bed, do the dishes, make sure the bathrooms have toilet paper, clean the dog’s ears – all to avoid sitting at my desk and actually writing something.  Writing is painful.  It’s hard and sometimes it’s boring.  Yet it’s all I want to do.

There is a name for fear of writing – graphophobia – but I’m not sure that’s what I have.  I’m not actually afraid, more like extremely hesitant. Scriptophobia, sounds more to the point, more descriptive, dare I say, yet is in fact a fear of writing by hand. I certainly don’t have that. Creating a shopping list poses no problem at all.

It’s not exactly writer’s block either.  I have the ideas.   I think my problem is that I am overwhelmed by my novel in progress – a longer piece of writing than I’ve ever attempted.  I am on the fourth revision but not close to being finished.  While some writers have to cut out pages and pages, I have the opposite problem.  I am too succinct.  It’s like I’m afraid of taking up too much of the reader’s time. No matter how many pages I try to add, it’s still more like an outline of a book, rather than a real book. Maybe it’s because I revere books so much, I feel inadequate to create my own. Or maybe I’m just lazy. 

Hence the blogs and the social media.  Baby steps.  Small projects.  But also, yes, another form of procrastination.  Sometimes, though, the very act of writing these smaller pieces does enable me to revisit the big work.  Writers out there, how do you jump start your writing? Any constructive advice is welcome. I thank you, and most important, my dog will thank you. He hates having his ears cleaned.