Fiction Scribe

Sounds pretty, doesn’t it?

If you’ve been reading along in this series and have wondered, “Which one of these blocks does JM get?” Well, today is the day.

I’m an environmental perfectionist.

I feel like I’m confession a cardinal sin here. Weird. But it’s the truth. If there is one thing that I have let block me and used as an excuse to not write, it’s being an environmental perfectionist. Be it needing the ‘right’ notebook or getting very upset if I lost the pen I was writing a particular story with, I had so many little ‘ticks’ that ended up making it nearly impossible to get any writing done.

I still have my preferences – black ink as opposed to other colours, cheap spiral notebooks as opposed to other bindings – but I don’t let them overwhelm me to the point of stopping me writing altogether anymore.

If you can feel yourself slipping into the realm of environmental perfectionism or you feel you’re already there:

1. Start switching up where you write. Try different locations to get yourself more focused on the writing than on the environment.

2. Write upside down. Again, the key is to get you focused solely on the writing. Flip your notebook over or on its side. Try writing from the back cover to the front cover.

3. Write on index cards for a while instead of in a notebook. This one is especially useful (fun and interesting as well) if you, like me, get stuck into having the ‘perfect’ notebooks for writing in.

Keep in mind that it isn’t a crime to want things certain ways while you write. I prefer spiral notebooks to write in because I find them more convenient. The problem comes along when I think I ‘need’ a spiral notebook with a specific cover, has x number of pages…

You see what I’m getting at?

Never slip so much into a habit that it keeps you from writing when you can’t continue the habit.