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Mary Durfee's avatar

I am a deep procrastinator. It helps me to have a deadline...like a paper for a conference. Then I do some gentle, non-urgent writing. The comes a bit of deeper thinking. The last two weeks of finishing is pretty much all binge. I try to remember to leave a day of letting the paper/manuscript rest and a day to read it carefully and make corrections. There is usually also one last day of binging somewhere in there--like when I decide a section isn't working or the argument was more lost than I thought. Right now, I'm all good intentions, but in a deep fallow (a polite word for doing nothing) period.

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Dr. Kate Henry's avatar

I'm definitely a mix of longer binge writing sessions with shorter sessions for editing. It's been a very long time since I was binge writing right up agains a deadline, so I tend to think of my longer writing sessions as a mini-writing retreat. For example, when my spouse is out of town for work trips, I like to sometimes spend 6+ hours in a day on a project, moving between tasks like brainstorming, mind mapping, outlining, writing prose, revising, etc. That ends up feeling fun. I was also prompted by your post to think about times in the past when my chronic illnesses were acting up and writing was very hard to do, so when I had a day with focus and energy I might focus on writing more because I didn't know if later that day or the next day might be more challenging. Of course, as you said in your post, it's essential to rest after a lot of output (and depending on how you feel, "a lot" will look different every day). Thanks for sharing this post, Jenn, and I'm looking forward to hearing what other folks have to share, too!

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