Procrastination

A short post today.

In my last non-book review post, I was talking about my GAD. At my appointment with my psychologist today, we looked at some ways to tackle procrastination.
I procrastinate a lot. A lot of people do it. I even feel comfortable saying that everyone does it now and then.
But I'm not comfortable with the way I put things off. Especially things that make me happy, like writing.
Part of what we talked about today, was writing down the pros and cons of the task I might be putting off. If the pros outweigh the cons, do it. If the cons outweigh the pros, then you've stopped procrastinating and confronted the issue*.

So, regarding my NYWM project, my heart just wasn't in it. I'm sorry if you enjoyed it, but I've put it on the back burner for now and may return to it when I'm ready to put my heart into it.
Talking to a professional has helped me to look forward to writing time again. I've never believed in writer's block, until this year when I started yet another WiP while I had a two book series on the go too. I still don't believe in writer's block, not really. But I do believe that there are emotional and other problems that create the blockages, not the writing or creativity in themselves.

To be clear, I'm not just seeing a psychologist because I haven't been writing as much as I liked, but this is mostly a writing blog, so I'm posting my writing relevant thoughts here.

:D Not such a short post after all.

*That probably didn't make sense. I'll figure out exactly what I meant and get back to you.

Reassessing.

I have a tendency to take things a little too seriously. In this instance, it's NYWM. I started it because I thought it would be a fun way to start my character blog and challenge myself in a new medium as well as developing my protagonist from my book further.
Then I missed a day. Then another. And a third time.
I started to get anxious because I wasn't following through with my goals. And I started to get anxious because I thought it was crap and who would want to read it?
The best part was that I was concentrating on my other projects because I was putting off my NYWM goal.

Recently I've started seeing a psychologist, because this worry isn't something exclusive to my writing. He told me I have something called General Anxiety Disorder (GAD). It's treatable and already I'm starting to feel better.
However, I used some of the techniques I've been learning to manage the worry, and applied them to how I'm feeling about not following through with NYWM goals.
I've overreacted a little, and realised that the idea behind NYWM (besides the writing of course) was to have fun. At least, that's how I should have been taking it.
And it's something I need to remember about my writing. I write because I love it, and it is ultimately fun. As soon as I start taking it seriously, nothing happens and my projects lie stagnant. The same with Twitter and Blogging. If I take them seriously as 'networking tools', then all of a sudden, I'm overcome with anxiety and nothing gets done.

So, especially for the rest of this month, I'm going to have fun with NYWM. Who cares if my character blog doesn't go anywhere? Who cares if it doesn't make sense?

Right now, I don't. I'm going to have fun.