Just get your mowing clothes on

Beginning to write (in general, on any given day) can sometimes be difficult. There are a lot of tasks I find difficult. One of my worst is mowing. We live on a big lot, with lots of grass. Two houses will fit on this lot; at the moment, however, it only has one house on it, with a little old-fashioned car house at the back. The rest is grass, or shrubs that grass grows around. Mowing in zigzags around these shrubs as well as completing the rest of the "paddock sections" (as I dub them) usually takes me "a couple of hours".

You may wonder what mowing has to do with writing, and I can see why you'd wonder that. But bear with me a moment—I'm working my way round to it, I promise.

I've observed that a genuine desire to achieve difficult, tiring, ambiguous, or unpleasant tasks does not appear in my body (i.e., in either thought or emotion) until I'm about halfway through them. Getting to halfway is therefore the main challenge. In terms of mowing, my strategy has to overcome these truths:

1. It's hot outside.

2. Mowing makes me hot.

3. I'm going to get really dirty.

4. It will take hours.

5. I haven't arranged dinner, so that will be another task for when I'm exhausted, later.

6. I'll be exhausted later.

7. I'm already pretty tired now, actually.

And so on. Since, however, I'm contractually obligated to mow my lawn for the person who owns the grass (and the house), and since that grass seems to grow a lot more than it would if I had any control over the matter, I have to mow.

So I break my task into little tiny pieces. Really really easy ones; ones I know I can just do while I block out the fact that they are leading to mowing.

That's the key, you see: Not mowing. That's what I want to do: Not mow. So my strategy is to do things that, taken in sequence, may coincidentally lead to a position of mowing, even though, on their own, none of them are mowing in itself, and none can be called mowing while I'm doing them. The vital thing, therefore, is to agree with existing general desire, and remind myself that I am not mowing as I do these tasks:

1. Get my mowing clothes on.

2. Get thick socks on.

3. Get a big bottle of water and put it at the back door.

4. Get my boots on.

5. Take the keys and open the shed.

6. Get my gloves on.

7. Clear the yard of rubbish I don't want the mower to dissect. If this takes ages, I don't worry. I'm still not mowing.

At this point, I slow down time by making the tasks more detailed for myself:

1. Go into the shed.

2. Pick up and open the fuel container (it's actually very stupid to open, so slowing down time is important for this task anyway).

3. Tip the fuel into the mower.

4. Put the fuel cap back on the mower (and pam it down hard, Dearie, because you already lost the real one and this one is only the lid to the sanitiser bottle, so make sure it doesn't come off).

5. Close the stupid fuel container and put it away.

6. Move the mower, now, and roll it out into the yard.

7. Take hold of the rip cord, and pull it (like, six times, because the spark plug won't live up to its name unless I bully it repeatedly).

The mower is now going. I know this because of the roaring. At this point, I disengage denial, and I mow.

Silly as all this sounds, it's a good blueprint for beginning your writing on those days when your "guilt–worry–procrastination dial" has slid up to maximum. You can write your own sequence, but here's one that might be a good start:

Begin with a time slowdown sequence. Embrace not writing to the full, and don't blame yourself for it anymore. You're engaging the process of beginning, which is the same (and just as important) as:

1. Finding a clean cup.

2. Filling the kettle.

3. Turning on the kettle.

4. Typing those nagging to-do items into your phone/text your mother/a friend/neighbour with beard.

5. Making a cup of tea/coffee.

6. Putting the milk away (think of others and think of the milk).

7. Taking the beverage on a slow stroll to your workstation and putting it on a coaster. If it takes awhile to find a coaster (or your workstation), so be it.

Now, remember that you are not writing yet.

1. Sit down at the workstation, and read your emails. Might as well. You would have anyway.

2. Open a couple of files. Maybe the one you haven't finished writing yet, that's pending. Maybe a new one.

3. If you need to read pdfs, find the pdfs you want to open. If you don't know which one to open, just open four or five. They're really data efficient, so they won't chew your RAM.

4. If your text file is a new one, type "This is a new heading" at the top. Technically, this doesn't count as writing; it's just breaking the ice with the blank page so it becomes more friendly.

5. Try reading one of the pdfs (e.g., your assignment file, or a document with a name like Boringbutnecessary et al.). Reading is not writing: remember this. So just read. You might also reread the file you opened that you haven't finished (maybe you even left some slalom flags* in there).

6. Eventually, something will assert itself though the haze of this ripcord-pulling avoidance. Probably, you'll think something like, "This task/assignment is really very basic/stupid." Write that down, and add "because". Then finish the sentence.

You won't hear any roaring—which is good, because it's better not to notice that—guess what? You're writing, now, kiddo. Go get 'em.

And have a beautiful day!

* See The New Adventures of Boots and Potter Episode 3 on my Instagram.