Thursday, October 25, 2007

Why I un-installed the games in my computer

A web content writer, or any other writer, usually, is a self-employed individual. No bosses to watch over him, and no fixed time schedule to follow, except his own. While this is desirable, this can also be a factor to his unproductivity: he can stop working anytime as he pleases. This makes the writer, especially beginners (like me) who has not adopted a discipline yet, susceptible to a lot of time-wasters.

You see, when you are faced with difficult humps anytime during the writing process, it is easy to just figuratively fidget and do something else to try to take your mind off the difficulty. You may play solitaire endlessly, write some e-mail, or YM a friend (endlessly too!) You can even leave your computer and fix yourself some coffee, shoot some hoops, or do the laundry.

I figured these are some causes of my being so stressed out. Not being able to finish enough articles, is just one cause of this stress. What makes it worse is, while I am acutely aware of this, I tend to make myself busy doing a lot of things other than writing. When one is stressed, he can feel excess energy swelling up inside him. In my case, instead of using this energy to propel the writing process, I direct this energy to doing mundane tasks. It's like a placebo that doesn't work. The longer I get back to get the writing juices going, the more intense the stress becomes.

As a solution to this difficulty, I un-installed the games in my computer, including solitaire, free cell, etc. These are the less demanding games that are so tempting anyone could turn to when facing writer's block. I also made it a point never to surf the internet (especially YouTube!-- the prank videos, one time, made me forget myself; my guffaws could be heard several houses away!) during breaks in writing except when doing research. And I make it a point to do research before i proceed on writing. No more unscheduled breaks (which if unnoticed, could happen every ten minutes, and would last an hour each break!)

One becomes a writer because he loves writing. So you cannot say writing is a difficult task. The discipline that goes with it IS difficult.

Writing as a hobby gives you the freedom when and when not to write. While this principle, to some extent, remains true to a professional writer, he is now saddled with editors, deadlines, and work volumes to take into consideration. This means this freedom is no longer absolute, if it means meeting deadlines.

It is best to note then that while you write before because of your passion, now, you write because it is your profession. And when we talk about a profession, the concept of professionalism is usually not far away ahead. Work discipline is the first step to attaining the concept of professionalism.

As a conclusion, it is time for me (and you) to bring "writing" to another level. Writing is no longer just a passion. Writing IS a discipline.

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