Ketchup...

December 11 – 11 Things What are 11 things your life doesn’t need in 2011? How will you go about eliminating them? How will getting rid of these 11 things change your life?

And here's where it becomes difficult to make these things work for writing. Ah heck, we'll take a swing at it anyway...

1) Self Doubt. For real. There are times I just need to get over my crippling insecurities, pull on my big girl panties and just write without worrying about how horrible it is.

This goes hand in hand with...

2) Perfectionism. Having high standards is one thing. Demanding that everything come out exactly right the first time is quite another.

...which can lead to...

3) Guilt. Sometimes, you miss a day. Sometimes something happens. It's okay. Not a big deal. No need to stress about it.

...in direct contrast to...

4) Fecklessness
and
5) Laziness.  Sometimes, you do need to kick yourself in the pants to get something done.

6) Wangst. In both real life and my writing. This is "duh" in real life. In my writing, I seem to have been leaning towards the wangst a bit. Angst is fine in fiction, provided it doesn't become excessive and annoying. But because I tend to write character-driven pieces and my characters all seem to want to have whiny pasts, the wangst piles on. I need to cut it out, to realize when something is becoming too much.

Other, less serious things I don't need in writing...

7) Pens that run out of ink.

8) Stupidly designed notebooks (or the guilt of not filling them up because they are stupid to write in... curse, you, lavender velvet contraption that is so not writer-friendly!).

9) Carpal Tunnel Syndrome (though there's really no helping it now that I've got it...).

10) Not knowing what to write.

11) Cardboard.

Mmm, got to scraping a little, I did there. It's what I get for trying to twist these prompts around to writing. But it's what I want and according to number two, I can allow myself to hit a mark less than perfect.

Most of this is just mindset. And, oddly enough, all I really need to do is not think about avoiding it. I think about it too hard, I inevitably find myself angsting about it, and then bad things happen. The key is to just go with the flow.