Archive for August 2009

Sneaking up on the first draft—part 2

I’m continuing to explore how to get drafts written more quickly as a way, if not to short-circuit the stress of writing, at least to manage it better. In my last post I recommended the Gigantic Outline. Today’s technique is from Robert Boice, whom I’ve mentioned in previous posts. Boice recommends an approach he calls […]

Sneaking up on the first draft—part 1

This week I experimented with ways of getting ideas down on paper more quickly. The thought is that if I can’t (yet) see a way to get rid of the reflexive unpleasantness that continues well past the “just starting” stage, I can at least reduce its duration…by having something closer to a draft to work […]

Procrastination, anxiety, and the ugly truth about “just starting”

Lots of people insist that the way to deal with procrastination is just to get started. “Once you sit down and get started, it’s never as bad as you expect,” they’ll say. Well, not so helpful. Not for me. Because sometimes, depending on the creative project, the sitting down is unpleasant, the getting started is […]