ANNOUNCEMENTS:
Advertising for our Writer's Conference is underway. If you know of a place to advertise please contact Carl Collins.
We fund a student scholarship. Part of the funds for this scholarship come from the raffle and action at the conference. If you know someone who would like to participate in this, contact Amanda Skenandore.
Mark your calendars for our upcoming Holiday Party on December 17th at the Clark County Library! Please let Jo know if you are planning on coming so we can make correct arrangements for food. Family members and friends are welcome!
Don't forget that starting this January our weekly meetings will alternate between Vegas and Henderson.
I've put together a group to participate in the Dirty Girl Fun Run on February 23rd. If you go to their site (You ought to!) and register before November 26th, you get a significant discount! Our group is called "Henderson Writers" and we'll start our course at 10:00 a.m. It's a women-only event. It's not a race really, there is no clock running and it's designed more for fun than physical endurance. But we are pretty guaranteed to be covered in mud by the end.
BRAGS:
Congratulations to Jo Wilkins on an excellent review of her books, the Tyranny series!
UPCOMING MEETINGS:
Our next meeting is our weekly Monday meeting, November 26th at the Lutheran church in room C2. Next Wednesday (Nov 28th) there will be a Westside meeting. For more information see our calendar.
QUOTE OF THE NIGHT:
"We all have very short attention spans, and they are getting shorter by the second."
"What?"
"Exactly."
WRITING TIP from Jo Wilkins:
Keep it tight. Stick to the rule of 3 so prevalent in writing, use no more than 3 paragraphs to describe anything, even an emotional upheaval in your character. More than that takes the reader away from your plot or your character development.
ARTICLE by Linda Molony:
Overcoming Procrastination
About 20 percent of people identify themselves as chronic procrastinators. They don't pay bills on time…they miss opportunities for buying tickets to concerts… they don't cash checks or gift certificates… they file income tax returns late…. they leave their Christmas shopping until Christmas Eve…
Sound familiar? How about this:
Procrastinators actively look for distractions. Checking email is almost perfect for this purpose, and this leads to the most dangerous form of procrastination: unacknowledged “Type-B” procrastination. This doesn't feel like procrastination because you're getting things done. The problem is, you’re not working on the task at hand.
Procrastinators tell lies to themselves. They say things like, “I’ll feel more like doing this tomorrow” and “I work better under pressure.” Oh, right… and then as the deadline is upon us, we hand in our work, wishing we had just one more day.
Procrastination is not a problem related to time management. It’s a problem of self-regulation. Happily, procrastination is one more thing you can blame on your parents! Yep, procrastination is one response to an authoritarian parenting style. Controlling parents keep children from developing the ability to regulate themselves. Related to this, procrastinators tend to drink more than they intend to. Um, that’s often true of writers, too… Just sayin’.
There are basically three types of procrastinators:
Avoiders:
Those who avoid pain defer the pain of completing the task until the sense of pain associated with the task becomes much greater if they don't get started immediately.
Those who have a fear of failure would rather have others think they lack effort than ability.
Those who have a fear of success are afraid they don’t deserve success or will be unable to sustain it.
Arousal types are thrill-seekers who wait to the last minute for the euphoric rush of having to get it done—NOW!
Decisional procrastinators cannot make a decision, which absolves them of responsibility for the outcome of events.
So how can we overcome procrastination?
1. Replace “have to” with “want to.” Procrastination becomes less likely with tasks that you freely choose to undertake. When you tell yourself that you have to do something, you imply you're being forced to do it, so you'll automatically feel a sense of resentment and rebellion.
2. Replace “finish it” with “start it.” Start with one small piece of the task instead of feeling you have to finish the whole thing.
3. Replace perfectionism with permission. Don’t feel you have to do the job perfectly out of the gate. That way of thinking will likely prevent you from even getting started.
4. Bite off small chunks at a time. No matter how unpleasant the task, there's virtually nothing you can't endure for just 30 minutes.
5. Hold yourself accountable to others. Give yourself a deadline and tell other people about it. This way, you won’t want to shame yourself by missing it.
I have more to say about procrastination, but I’ll tell you some other time…
Great article, Linda! I couldn't wait to tell you.
ReplyDeleteJudy Logan (and how come I have to sign in as anonymous???? What's up with that?)
The kitchen sink photo in the Procrastination article reminds me a bit of the kitchen sink in my first apartment.
ReplyDeleteThe drain was plugged, so the sink had standing water in it.
There was no screen on the window immediately above the sink.
One evening I took a look at the contents of the sink. There were mosquito larva, also known as wigglers, growing in it!
I'm reasonably certain none had matured to the point of pupation yet, let along adult insects.
Not having the means to hand to unplug the drain, I was forced to improvise.
I drained the sink by making a siphon out of a length of aquarium air tubing, and draining the sink out of my second story window. No water, no mosquito larva.