Procrastination

I've been spending too much time proofreading existing texts--within a week I've reached the proofreading scholar rank and landed among the top 100 first-round proofreaders--and too little time revising my own text. It's always easier to spot errors in another's work, but that's not my problem.

My problem is that I receive instant gratification from the proofreading--I can see how many pages I've proofed and know that that text is one step closer to the final product--yet, when working on my own text, gratification is delayed, if not elusive.... I get frustrated when I don't see measurable progress. In the writing stage, I set myself a daily word goal--and can see measurable progress, but using word count as a quantifier doesn't work as well for the revision stage.

The revision stage is a back-and-forth process. I might delete a few words or pages of text. I insert notes about what should be moved where, what needs researching, etc., yet those words don't qualify as progress, per se. I rewrite sections and write sections from scratch.

How do I quantify progress when word counts plunge and soar? Perhaps I should measure progress scene-by-scene, or chapter-by-chapter. One thing remains certain: if I continue to procrastinate, I'll never make progress in any form.