I will be updating both the amazon store with new books and products as I review them, and will upload new images from The Naked Writer series of cartoons as these are created, to be printed onto Cafe Press products. If you have a particular request, please feel free to email me. Note: both stores are trading from the U.K.

Juiced on Writing Amazon Store	The Naked Writer Cafe Press Store
Books on Writing, Creativity and Life	Purchase The Naked Writer cartoons on T-Shirts, Bags, Flips & Journals.

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Pro-crast-i-na-tion.

Say it slowly. It’s almost one of those onomatopoeia types. You almost yawn in the middle of it.

* Even the term procrastination calls for some kind of slow sloppy groupage. Not a ‘spurt’ of procrastination – that would never do. Nor a ‘blast’ or ‘gathering’. No, Procrastination itself calls for something squelchy and mud-like, don’t you think?

Pro-crast-[yawn]-in-a-tion [shake head].

In my household we don’t use the word. That was originally because we have a six year old, and can’t use such a long word to get our point across. She’d eventually get the point, but has a six year old’s habit of repeating things from home back at her teacher – who wouldn’t get the point, other than the fact that we were attempting to raise a precocious child.

In my household we use the term, “Mucking Around”. It is used quite often lately, when my daughter becomes distracted and forgets I’ve asked her to do something. Meanwhile I’m waiting impatiently wondering what’s taking her so long. It’s one of those high frequency terms of our shared life together lately.

“Mucking Around” has consequences. If she mucks around getting dressed in the morning (I found her last week having taken fifteen minutes to stand there in her PJ’s with one sock on) then there is less time to eat her breakfast or play before school. If she mucks around eating her dinner (which can somehow take a full hour, if we let it) then she misses out on getting to bed early enough to have playtime in the bath, or read herself to sleep. If she mucks around getting changed into her dance costume, there’s a good chance next time that we’ll run too late and I won’t take her at all. Harrumph.

“Mucking Around” runs on the principle of ’cause and effect’. If you don’t do what you’re supposed to be doing at the time you’ve got to be doing it, then something else has to give. But you never get away with not doing it in the first place. And if the effects are too dire, then you’re in ‘big big trouble’.

Something similar happens in the normal workplace, I know. If you’re not doing the job you’re scheduled to do, sometimes the repercussions can be heard throughout the office. Or if you do it enough times, then you find yourself searching for further employment opportunities elsewhere.

I figure that in my own writing I shouldn’t be “Mucking Around” quite so much. Never mind the pro-crast-i-na-tion, that one just puts me to sleep. No, “Mucking Around” means consequences, and I can’t afford them.

Credits: Source of fabulous Procrastination Flowchart

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Most of us can empathize with such days, when the whole world – or your small part of it – seems totally against your best intentions. Then something happens. Hopefully.

Once I’d re-established a shaky internet connection to my main computer and booted up this laptop I found that not one, but two things had happened. I had received emails on both main PC and laptop – one was from an old workmate, and employee – just catching up with our lives.

The other was from a total stranger, Mike, who had taken the time to not only read two of the posts on Juiced on Writing, but to craft up an email to me also, full of positive reinforcements. A long email, I should say.

And he was thanking me for making him smile?!

I appreciate the irony on this day.

Being of a certain generation, I can remember the age I was when I accepted the reality that the art of letter writing was a dying habit both within me and my group of family and friends. As my previous career was centred around I.T. I took to emails and other technology with huge gusto. Few of the friends I left behind in my New Zealand home towns share this love, or even have email addresses however. Yes, there are people out there who still get on in life without the internet. But even those people still in the pre-net age have slowed down their letter-writing habits to possibly match my own.

We correspond about once a year, if we’re lucky. I have to look up their foreign addresses to mail them something by dusting off an actual real-life address book.

This didn’t seem particularly sad to me, the loss of the letter. Because I had email and almost instant communications with many others, didn’t I? And I could type and therefore correspond so much quicker than I could in handwriting something.

But what I have missed until now, is the declining amount of emails sent to me, or sent out by me. My life, like that of many others, has moved to websites, blogs, and social media over the internet. My communications, other than the desertions on this blog, have been made smaller but faster, via blog comment boxes, or status updates, and many are miniaturised to what I can or can not do with 140 characters in Twitter, a comment on Facebook, or a couple of paragraphs in a blog comment. These are all communications which are fast, and timely, which do get to those people quickly, and hopefully have some positive impact – but they are also very public and very shortened.

Then Mike’s and my old workmate’s emails both arrived this morning, and my appreciation of that feeling of intimacy and the time taken to craft those communications to me, caused me to grieve a little for the time when emails – at least – were the done thing.

When’s the last time you actually emailed a distant friend if both of you are on Facebook? Is sharing funny YouTube videos, or family photos, or event invitations the same as sharing your real thoughts in a more private arena?

When’s the last time you took the time to craft a long and thought-out email sharing some of your own thoughts or self because you found some kind of connection in their writing – and for a complete stranger?

Following Mike’s timely example to me today, I have decided to make this a policy in my own life from now on. There are a lot of blogs and websites I read often – most in a feed reader – but sometimes I discover new blogs and posts which I read and connect with. Yet how rarely do I think I have the time to post even a comment on that post, let alone put some effort into emailing the author, and sharing some of my own feelings or thoughts with them.

Sometimes I stop myself because the person I’m reading appears to be more experienced or established than me. They may be incredibly popular when it comes to blog comments, or just in views. I don’t feel I have anything to offer, I find myself thinking. But what of that? Why can’t I just offer my own story, and thanks for making me think, and in a private way that’s not anything about getting a web link onto another blog for page-rankings, or shortened by the format or intrusive social media requirements? Why is the art of email writing dying within me?

This stops now.

Bring back emails. Bring back some privacy and intimacy in our communications.

Watch out, you may get an email from me one day. And I will craft it with purpose and hope it brings a smile to your own face as Mike’s did for me today.

LinkMe:

For those wanting a reminder or some personal email etiquette, the inemitable Seth Godin has recently posted a set of bullet points on the subject.

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I told somebody I write the other day. That person was outside of my immediate family. And they didn’t laugh in my face, or pretend I’d not said it. Perhaps that person is distant enough from me, to be impressed, unlike those who are closer acquaintances, and perhaps think they know enough about me.

Previously my parents-in-law have been told of this, forced out of me when my father-in-law caught me reading a how-to-write book. Now, he expects me to have been published, and be on the best-seller list. I cringe when he brings the subject up, because no amount of explanation that it all takes time seems to get through. My mother-in-law, on the other hand, hasn’t enquired into my efforts at all.

After that, I’ve broached the subject tentatively around the groups of school mums I have occasion to stand with, or sit with (normally associated with waiting for our children to come out of some dance class or other). I’ve walked around with writing magazines half-read on me also, blatantly out there in public. I’ve mentioned writing a novel…I’ve mentioned writing, I’ve mentioned working hard at writing, all in general conversation with that Mum or this Mum, and on several occasions with my own workmates…

No bites.

Well, there was the one woman who laughed out loud, then pretended her young son needed his nappy changed immediately, to exit herself from the dialogue.

I admit readily that it has taken a long time, accordingly, for me to personally embrace the writer side of me, based a tiny bit on the fact that a few people around me (other than my father-in-law, bless him) didn’t seem to acknowledge it either. I’d not let it stop me, or bother my writing goals at all, but there remained some outer confirmation I needed over the last year which I was not getting. I wasn’t hoping for outright eagerness, or even more than a general inquiry how it was going for me, but I did hope to be able to celebrate finishing a novel last November with a group of real-world people.

Finally, I got the eyebrow of at least feigned interest last Saturday night. It was one of the few nights in years that I was out as an adult (parents of young children will know what I’m talking about), attending a next door neighbour’s fortieth birthday celebrations. All of the neighbours were there, sticking with each other because the rest of the party guests were relatives or unknown work mates of the guest of honour. Even though we barely knew each other, as neighbours we at least had a driveway in common, and had shared brief conversations (and a borrowed ladder) before.

The general discussion talked about our pets, again about our pets, about the dangerous commutes various individuals had to drive to work, and from that went onto the inevitable – work (after a diversion back to our pets). And after dulling them with a rendered spiel of how I worked part-time down at the local after-school club (which, as non-parents, they had no idea existed), I mustered up the courage to admit I was writing in the other free hours of my school day. Writing. Gulp.

My next door neighbour, Tom, raised his eyebrow in interest, tilted his head forward, and opened his mouth to ask more. That’s all I wanted. We didn’t need to venture further into what kind of writing – nor could we, given the hired disco in the next room ramped the volume up several notches at that exact moment; but he accepted me as being ‘writing’, and it looked like he was – gosh – interested.

I haven’t tried to analyse why writing around here appears to be a conversation stopper. I do know that there are no writing – or reading groups – around the village, and that this is a commuter village – the majority of people commute out to work. We are a rushed community, going here and there to meet activities and taxi our children around. And it appears that amongst my own social circles no one else has somebody in the family who wants to be a writer (and I thought everyone did!). There are many reasons why those people here in this village don’t know how to acknowledge a writing (or other crafting) effort. And it’s not their job to have to do so.

I also believe that this feeling may be shared with some of those new to writing, like me. Motivating ourselves to write is one giant step in itself, but we also have to deal with those little niggly demotivating factors which we let in, and which can get in our way – if we let them. That is just a big a step as finding the inspiration to write in the first place. Writing against adversity, even if silent, or internal, is as much a learning curve as writing at all.

For me, I had support in my dreams from my husband, and to some lesser extent family. I did not discount this, but I needed to see the acknowledgement more publically – just a tiny bit. I do have a bad habit of quantifying the supportive attitudes of my husband however. He’s there, afterall, to be my best advocate and greatest fan. It’s part of the contract. He already believes in me, but what of others? One can’t help wondering sometimes…

So, I, and my writing, had to ‘go public’, and efforts to make this happen over the last year have not entirely been fruitful, especially locally. Not until now, at least.

But thanks to Tom the neighbour’s minor interest, I now feel I have moved over some minor boundary, and find myself a little more assertive in my own personal acknowledgement of my being somebody ‘who writes’. And I have somebody (outside of myself and family) who I have something to prove to. Because when we ever find ourselves out there on the driveway together one morning, putting the wheelie bins out for collection, and Tom asks me, ‘How’s it going?’ I want to be able to answer him honestly with – ‘Good, thanks’.

To all the Toms in the world, whether you’re a busy commuting neighbour, or best friend to a wannabe writer, or simply an acquaintance expressing some interest – thank you.

Do you remember that first ever public acknowledgement of your craft or dream? Was it as long time coming as mine? Or did you hold onto other de-motivators which led you to struggle to acknowledge your dream of writing? Please share, if you have the time.

~

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I blame this upbringing in its entirety for the predicament I now face. As an ecological warrior, I’ve  drawn  a line on printing out my 300 page manuscript. Such a line that I’ve now not done it for a week.

This would be funny if it weren’t such a necessity. Everyone I read or consult with tells me that you must revise your first draft in a printed format, a proper printout. NOT on the computer.

But I sit here, looking at my little inkjet printer (£35 each for a new set of consumerable inks) and my A4 ream of off-white paper (£5.95) and contemplate the hours of feeding through one blank page by one blank page (4 hours conservatively = £2 in power) and I can’t do it.

I’m the person who was recycling all her bottles, plastics, paper, newsprint, magazines, and cardboard packaging into council-supplied bins at the age of fifteen. I’m the person who has supported Greenpeace and other environmental charities, donated to save African and Indian children from environmental plagues, and I’m the person who has sponsored goats and camels and trees to populate rainforests (not the goats, the trees).

I’m not the person to print off 300 draft pages, only to scribble all over them, then dump them into a bin, only to repeat the process all over again. I do have recycling bins, mind you. And all our papers go into one of them – but should my novel be treated like that? Even in draft revision form? Or even if I got to that point of having mustered up the environmental courage to print out all those wasteful pages, would I then need to turn to powering up a shredder and shredding my hard-won papers? And the council around these parts doesn’t ‘do’ shredded paper, so it would have to go into the general dustbin, to go off and create more landfill.

No, my little voice tells me I’m not that kind of person, better to not do it at all. (It’s wrong, of course, but…)

I used to be that kind of person. Back in my corporate days, I used to spend a little private time, printing off personal documents – ebooks, articles, coursework, research – spitting it out onto the department’s laser printer, then rushing to pick up my copies and add more paper into the trays before anyone found me using the corporate stationery for personal use.

Then, it didn’t worry me. Because everyone was doing it, and because it was just much easier to read things in real-life, rather than on the computer monitor which, let’s face it – we all sat in front of for eight solid hours in our working day. Getting up and going to the printer was as much an excuse to stretch as anything. Plus it was good for our ergonomical health – the posture police told us so. All these reasonings (and many other excuses) counter-acted against the environmental implications of using the corporate laser printers like that.

Now, when faced with the evidence of my own environmental impact – and the cost, let’s be honest – and I find myself unable to do it any longer. I can’t sit there, and print off 300 plus pages of my novel. It’s making me hurt to think of that necessity, a similar hurt to that found when contemplating the task of burning 500 gigabytes of data to a box full of writable DVDs or CD-Roms – one by one, slowly…painfully…

Backing up, and printing out – both seem ecologically wasteful, incredibly time-consuming,  but necessary tasks. And ones this eco warrior is finding difficult to accomplish. Who would have known that the planet’s ecology would have seen me find a new way to procrastinate my way out of doing a writing task?

Do you have any inhibitions about printing out your own manuscripts, as I do? Please feel free to share any tips on how I should be revising that novel draft.

Addendum [Later]: I just realised there’s something else here that’s making me reserved about printing that manuscript out – and it’s not to do with the true problem that I don’t have enough ink as yet – it’s to do with making the whole thing real. Whilst that novel sits on my laptop, it’s still virtual. Printed out, well – I have proper evidence of either a writing success or possible failure – but either way, it becomes much tangible. With that understanding of the background fear, I can work through it a little easier.

Still need that ink, though.

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At the same time, I’m introducing in a series of cartoon characters based on me. These are called “The Naked Writer” and you’ll see her popping up occasionally on the blog posts here, as I create more of her. I hope you enjoy all the changes and the cartoons also.

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1. A good title allows the reader to predict the content.
2. A good title catches the reader’s interest
3. A good title reflects the slant or tone of the writing.
4. A good title contains keywords that will make it easy to find via a computer (or internet) search.

Notice my keywords in the title chosen above – functions, good, title. And it couldn’t be any more reflective of what this little piece is about, could it now?

So saying that, I always go off and break the rules. Don’t you? But if I really want the article found – particularly if publishing on the internet, then I’ll stick to the functions.

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