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Tag Archives: anxiety and writing
The Procrastination Wheel of Suffering: Part Five – Anxiety, Deadlines and Binge Writing
Still spinning on the wheel… Overwhelm; Deadline; Anxiety Threshold As the final deadline for completing your project becomes imminent, reality breaks through and you become motivated by dread and fear of failure. As this fear of failure becomes more powerful than the fear … Continue reading
The Procrastination Wheel of Suffering: Part Four – Avoidance, Worry, Lying, Self-Criticism
• Avoidance; Worry As you travel around the Wheel of Suffering, your level of concern escalates, as does your motivation to avoid. Worry is a good thing on one hand because it elevates your awareness of what you need to do, but … Continue reading
Spinning on the Procrastination Wheel: Part 2 – Fear of Failure, Anxiety, Resentment
Fear of Failure; Anxiety As time passes you feel the need to get going and at this point you might experience tendrils of fear working their way into your consciousness. It begins to dawn that the task facing you may be more difficult … Continue reading
Are you in a double-dip daily word count recession?
As stock markets around the world shudder and plummet, and blue chips descend into double dips, I distract myself from the media panic by wondering about similarities between economic and writing recessions. Both types of recession are characterized by a … Continue reading
Rejection (real or imagined), dumb thumbs-down, and writing blocks
When ancient gladiators like Russell Crowe fought in the Colosseum in Rome, receiving a “thumbs down” from the Emperor meant a horrific death by spikes, battle axes and lions’ teeth. As brutal as that was, a gladiator’s life is a … Continue reading
Jason Schwartzman succumbs to Second Novel Syndrome in “Bored to Death.”
In the HBO series Bored to Death, we have another blocked writer protagonist getting into trouble, week after week. Jason Schwartzman, like David Duchovney in Californication, plays a blocked writer who overdoes it on the drugs and alcohol, has been dumped by the girl he … Continue reading
Do you worry about how much you should worry about writing?
It almost doesn’t matter whether you believe worrying about writing is helpful or not. Bobby McFerrin likes to sing “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” but if you’re worried, you’re worried, and it might not be so helpful to have Bobby tell you … Continue reading
Steve Martin’s writing block as comedy writer for the Smothers Brothers
While Steve Martin’s engaging book Born Standing Up is primarily about his incredible standup comedy career, it also gives the reader an informative glimpse into the life of a comedy writer. In addition to being a talented goofball, Martin is also … Continue reading
Luke Wilson gets unblocked with help from the mob and Kate Hudson in “Alex and Emma”
It’s the same old story: a novelist (Luke Wilson) incurs a 100K dog track gambling debt and is then assaulted by fey, bat wielding, laptop-burning Cuban mobster loan sharks who demand payment in 30 days, or they will kill him. … Continue reading
Dread’s bark is bigger than its jaws
Sometimes it’s an awful physical feeling that steers you away from doing some writing. You might not even know why you feel such intense dread, but it rises from the depths like a malevolent shark that terrorizes your will to … Continue reading
