Procastination and Battlestar Galactica

pro·cras·ti·natev.intr.

To put off doing something, especially out of habitual carelessness or laziness.

v.tr.

To postpone or delay needlessly.

What is it about a writers undeniable need to procrastinate? I have a deadline 30th June, I know the last rewrite must be finished by then and yet here I sit playing mind numbing games on social networking sites and contemplating opening my Battlestar Galactica box set and pretending I am Starbucks happily kicking Cylon ass while smoking large Cigars and saying Frakk in every sentence (for those who have never seen it I do apologise as what I have just written will make no sense to you what so ever). Even while blogging this I am convincing myself I am working and not just inadvertently putting off the inevitable! The definition I have put above says I am careless or lazy and postponing or delaying needlessly! Careless? I disagree I care very much about the Publishers wanting to print the words I write and pay me handsomely for it, Lazy? I have moved around today, well only to drive, shop and cook, but its still moving and defies the very definition of laziness! but the postponing and delaying needlessly i have no argument for....ok..... My name is Naomi Jacobs and I am postponing and delaying the rewriting of the 6th chapter of my book without good reason! there i've admitted it and now I have shamed myself enough into continuing on with the rewrite with a little FTL speed (another Battlestar G reference!) Faster Than Light.................

Friends

Today I had planned to blog about what actually happened when I lost my memory and how the amnesia was diagnosed. However, I have just got in from my daily walk (a must when sat on your bottom for several hours a day) and felt compelled to write about friendships and what happens when you forget them. What sparked the necessity to blog about friends was an encounter I have just had with an old friend I haven't seen since the memory loss. She was driving towards me, I recognised her from the private license plate on her large car, she drove past, we looked at each other lips pursed in a sort of weird semi-smile, and continued on in our opposite directions as. This perturbed me slightly, we were once so close and had shared some of our deepest feelings connecting through life and love and loss and yet here we were, strangers. On reflection I wondered what we would have possibly talked about if she had stopped? the answer? absolutely nothing, my life is so far removed from what it was back then that she would have found a complete stranger. Seeing her reminded me how much my life has changed since the memory loss notably the friendships that are no longer. Although tinged with a little sadness this is not necessarily a bad thing, during the memory loss I felt I had to cull the relationships that I viewed as unhealthy and a hindrance to my dreams of being a successful author. Since then I have learnt it is very important as a writer to have as many supportive, encouraging, loving positive people in your life who believe in what you write and who you are as an artist because for those singular moments in time when you forget, they remind you. This is a friend.

Self Promotion

Yay! I have two followers (thanks guys) and although they are both friends, am feeling positively chuffed with the fact that they are here reading my blogs and encouraging me to do this! As most writers will know, one thing we find quite difficult is self promotion. Give me a chapter to complete or a scene to re-write and I'll do it with aplomb. Ask me to endlessly talk about my self and sell my work, well unless I'm telling a story then I tend to shy away from such blatant ego driven advertisement. This I realise is not particularly helpful when writing a memoir, there has to be an ego driven self-determined almost delusional quality to ones self-grandiosity, 'What I have to say is very important and everyone will want to hear it' this you must be convinced of if you are to Self-Promote. Strangely with I Woke Up In The Future I have tried to do the exact opposite. I initially sent the first story to 4 magazines, 3 out of 4 paid me for it and to my great surprise I Woke Up In The Future became a small seed of self planted in the vast garden of promotion and has since been watered, fed, sometimes neglected but never forgotten. Now it is a small sapling which insists on growing and my only option is to tend to it, nurture it and protect it until its full maturation. This blog is my journal of this tree, which started out as a small insignificant seed of thought has taken form and developed into a 21 Chapter book. I am the inexperienced forester at the start of my training and this blog is my journal of observation.

Future Girl

This blog has been started for one reason only. I Woke Up In The Future, a true story, my story. A profoundly life changing experience that reverberates still throughout every facet of my life and has taken me on a roller coaster journey during the past two years as a writer. I deem it best to start then and work my way towards now and and I am hoping that maybe seeing it all in black and white in front of me will help me understand why the feature film script of the same title is now with a very important film producer and why I am should stick with the re-write of the book. As all writers know we must find reason almost everyday, to sit at our desks, switch on our computers, drink many cups of coffee and continue on down the road of dreams for a bestseller or a Original screenplay Oscar (both in my case) against the terror that you can't write you'll never make it and you should give up and go back to school and teach. This isn't the life I'm going to settle for, and I will blog about this internal rebellion for all things 'normal' as much as possible! If I do conform and listen to the naysayers then I Woke Up In The Future was for absolutely nothing and I may as well stop here. But if (as I so love to believe) that everything happens for a reason then losing my memory created Future Girl and its time for her to save the world!