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Thursday 29 November 2012

Putting things off and reward systems

I'd set aside this morning to clean the lounge because it's the first full day I've had free for some time and there wouldn't be another along until next week. Also the lounge needed a good clean before I send hubby up to the attic for the Christmas tree and other decorations.  But I hate housework!  So while I was contemplating the awful task I was reading my Discovering Art History and about to learn all on Jan Vermeer (I'm in the Baroque period) when I broke off to get an after breakfast coffee and as I sat down again I looked out of the window and thought 'this is the sort of time I'd write a poem.  I want to write one!' So I put my book aside and took up pen and paper.  I stared out of the patio door watching the clouds moving in the sky and there was my first line.  Soon a second line came and a whole stanza.  It wasn't until I got to the last line of the second stanza and I found I was using a line ending rhyme (to that of the second line) that I thought 'no, I don't want to rhyme, I'm writing in free verse.'  But you know how it is, sometimes poems dictate the structure themselves and this was one did because I looked back at the first stanza and realised that line two and four had an 'almost rhyme' to it.  So I gave in and ended up with four stanzas of rhyme or close rhyme.  It needs a little editing but I'm quite pleased with it.

I was then temped to sit down and blog but was very good and got on with the chore of cleaning and then went out shopping for my younger meat-starved son!

The only way I get things done when I really don't want to do them is to promise myself a reward afterwards - in this case, to go on my laptop!  What do you do to get motivated?

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