Life of E's

Writing has many phases. Thus, capturing your ideas, both the good and the not-so-good ones, is part of the process. Here are three ideas to get and keep your flow going so that you postpone your procrastination. There’s always time for that later…

1. Open a document.

Whether it is a document on your computer or a physical document that you have in a real folder (imagine that!) or however you perceive of the document on which you need to be working…open it. It is difficult to write without having a document open and ready for our words.

Stop procrastinating and open a document and see what happens. It might be quite productive! Really, this is the first idea and it’s kind of surprising how many writing procrastinators don’t get started with this.

2. Open your brain so there is flow.

Our brains can be our very best friends when we write or they can really seem to get in the way. If your brain is somewhat dammed up, then you need to get it moving again.

Just sit and envision your brain like a dam that is either overflowing or better yet, that has been opened to allow for a controlled flow. In your case, you are allowing ideas, thoughts, words, directions, structures, and concepts to flow through. There’s no blockage, only flow.

3. Always capture ideas.

Great ideas can come to us at any time – and that is usually when they arrive. Any ol’ time. In a meeting (that of course, is not about writing); sitting and waiting for the campus shuttle; while you are at a ball game; in the middle of writing about something else; while grading papers, and so on.

Never let an idea slip away. Keep tools available so you can jot down these random thoughts and ideas. When the idea occurs to you, there is no way for you to know if the idea will be good idea or not so great. You can make that determination later.

The main idea here is that you capture any and all ideas related to your writing, whenever they show up. As Peg Bracken reflects:

“Every idea is my last. I feel sure of it. So, I try to do the best with each as it comes and that’s where my responsibility ends. But I just don’t wait for ideas. I look for them. Constantly. And if I don’t use the ideas that I find, they’re going to quit showing up.”

You aren’t lacking for ideas. Allow them to be there for you so you can postpone your writing procrastination.

To access the Get a Plan! Guide™ to Postponing Writing Procrastination – with a cool mini-poster to help you remember 15 different tips for putting off your writing procrastination, just visit Get a Plan! Guide.