Today I finished organizing my new office. Leah helped me to assemble my second black bookshelf, and now all my books are put away. The closet in here is organized:
- My notebooks, filled with notes from business training the last several years, are in plastic tubs;
- My journals are in another plastic tub;
- Important papers are filed in a small file box;
- My books to sell at my next live event (July 11 @ 11 a.m. Central, details coming soon!) are boxed up, ready to go;
- Tax returns and this year’s bank statements are together and are in storage boxes on the shelf;
- Office supplies are organized and in a storage box.
The new office is now clean, neat, and completely organized. I’ve been unpacking and organizing our new house for a couple of weeks, taking off time from my business to get this done. It feels so good!
And as I finally sat down today at my desk to write, I realized now I have writer’s block! Or maybe it’s writer’s avoidance behavior.
Kathy Steffen writes about this in her post. Just click here.
I think my precious friend Rochelle, a.k.a. “Shelley” is doing this, too. For the last several weeks, she’s been “working on getting her office ready.”
Getting it ready has included shopping for a desk, a reading chair, a big screen t.v. (huh? Why does she need a t.v. in there if she’s working?), a cool futon…I think she may be just avoiding writing! 🙂
This is common among writers. They clean, organize, decorate, do anything to avoid writing – the very thing they love.
Why do they avoid it if they love it, though?
A lot of it is just plain fear. Fear of rejection from publishers (or fear of silence from your blog readers with NO comments!).
Fear it will be ridiculous, silly, or worse of all, BORING.
Fear that your writing isn’t good enough.
We writers all deal with this.
As Kathy Steffen says, “So what? Nobody else has to ever see it. When you get right down to it, writing is simply putting pen to paper and writing words. No one ever said what you write has to be interesting, good, or earth-shattering. Just write. No one has to see the first draft.”
She gives great tips for pushing past the fear and writer’s avoidance behavior (or legitimate blocks).
I loved her creative writing exercises, such as writing about a word like echo or about someone who is passive, a list of 20 things you’d like to do in the next year, or eavesdropping on a conversation, haha.
You can read her tips by clicking here.
In what ways do you find yourself doing writer’s avoidance behavior? Share in the comments below. (Yes, WRITE in the comments below!)
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