Do you ever
put off writing? Can you find really plausible excuses not to sit down and get
on with it? I suspect if we pooled all our excuses for putting off writing (and,
of course, many other things) there’d be a lot of overlap, but I also suspect
there are some excuses that are more specific and personal to each of us, the
ones that we’ve managed to craft carefully, often unconsciously, to fool
ourselves as best we can… After all, say Jane Burka and Lenora Yuen (authors of
the book, below), “it’s your
procrastination” and we can each find our own special ways of making those
excuses, the ones that will work best on the person it needs to work on: us.
I was always
a terrible procrastinator, but I’ve actually found a book that has had quite a
remarkable impact on me and I feel that if it can work for me, then there may
be hope for other procrastinating writers out there, too. And here’s the book:
Procrastination.
Why You Do It, What To Do About It NOW by Jane Buerka and Leonora Yuen (2008).
It’s not a new book (it was fully revised and updated for its 25th anniversary
–ten years ago, but it’s new to me and I have a feeling that it would help a
LOT of writers (and everyone else). So I’m going to write about it and describe
a week-long writing experiment I did based on the book, and how I wrote more in
that week than I had written in the three months before it, in the hopes that
it might be of some use to other writers.
I’ve known
for a long time that I’ve procrastinated and I’ve kind of described myself as
badly organised and thinking I need to get better at time management, and I’ve
enjoyed reading books about managing time more effectively (probably as a way
of procrastinating and not doing what I should have been doing). I guess I’ve
not felt too bad seeing myself as someone who isn’t great with time management…
but this book doesn’t see procrastination as a problem with time management as
much as with emotion management...
(Me being fearful)
And
that is harder –for me, at least (though I suspect, many of us)- to feel ok
about. As a writer (and former psychologist!), I like to see myself as being
pretty self-aware, so this book was challenging for me, and it may be
challenging for you, too, should you choose to read it, but I think it’s a
challenge well worth undertaking.
Jane Burka
and Lenora Yuen talk about procrastination as a shield:
“In one sense, procrastination has
served you well. It has protected you from what may be some unpleasant
realisations about yourself. It has helped you to avoid uncomfortable and
perhaps frightening feelings. It has provided you with a convenient excuse for
not taking action in a direction that is upsetting in some way,” (p137).
“For procrastinators, avoidance is
the king of defences, because when you avoid the task, you are also avoiding
the many thoughts, feelings, and memories associated with it,” (p93).
So this book
encourages you to be honest with yourself about things that you may not have
thought about for a long time in order to recognise what is happening to you
when you reach what they call a ‘choice point’ –the point at which you are
coming up with excuses not to sit down and write (in our case), where you need
to decide whether to go with the excuse, or carry on with the activity
(writing) anyway.
At
least, then, if you still conclude “…therefore, I’ll do it later”, you’re being
more consciously aware of your procrastination. But once you’re aware, you may
well choose to over-ride the desire to put it off, and do it anyway.
The authors
talk about physiological fear responses, and how for example, if you’re touched
unexpectedly, that fear response (and the body’s reaction) will occur before
you even feel the touch.
Goosebumps / goose pimples
And they relate it back to procrastinating:
"By the time you think about doing a task
you’ve been avoiding…, your body has already reacted with fear. No wonder you
put it off,” (p92).
And so the
book encourages us to identify (with useful lists) what triggers our own task
avoidance and for us to observe our reaction kindly and without judgement as a
step towards overcoming those physiological reactions we may feel when
confronting ourselves with something we’re trying to put off.
So what’s
holding you back from writing that story? Could it be
Fear of
failure?
Did people
praise you for writing as a child? Was that part of your identity? Does it feel
dangerous risking people’s (or your own) perceptions of yourself in case you
don’t get that publishing deal or the story isn’t as good as you thought it
would be? Is it safer not to do it?
A tiny proportion of my picture book rejection letters
Procrastinating
leads us to do things last minute, where we can avoid testing our true potential
(and risking our sense of self by what we might find) –so the final piece of writing is not a reflection of your true ability
but what you can do under last-minute pressure. Are you so frightened of
discovering that you’re not what you think you are/want to be, that you’re
willing to slow down so much and be last minute in order to avoid your best
work being judged?
Procrastination allows you to believe
that your ability is greater than your performance indicates –you never have to confront the real
limits of your ability.
OR
Perhaps people
didn’t have confidence in your writing when you were younger (or people don’t
now) –and if you did write something, might you be worried that those people
may be proved right?
Or could
what’s holding you back be a
Fear of
success?
This may
seem less obvious but the authors talk about this:
· Do you sometimes slow down on a project that’s going well?
· Do you feel anxious when you receive a lot of recognition?
· Are you uncomfortable with compliments?
· Do you worry about losing your connection with relatives if you’re
successful?
And perhaps…
· You fear/believe success in writing will demand more of you than you’re
willing/able to give (many of us know successful writers who are now extremely
pressed for time in the writing and personal lives).
· You’ll turn into a workaholic; people will become obstacles –success will
mean loss of control and loss of choice in your life
· You may be considered selfish or full of yourself
· You may get hurt –do you really want to be judged by your
readers/reviewers? –bad reviews/low sales figures can be extremely
demoralising.
There are lots of reasons explored in
the book, and identifying your own personal reasons will help you take
practical steps towards writing and stopping putting things off.
The book also helps you identify your
own procrastination style
Mine (when I
should be writing)? -reading emails, surfing the web, looking on Facebook, working
on something less important, sitting and staring, going to sleep
Your own physical feelings when you’re
meant to be starting something but are considering procrastinating:
Mine? –a feeling
in my chest and tummy; feeling light-headed
And your own excuses?
Mine? I’ve
got to get organised first; I don’t have everything I need; I don’t have time
to do it all so there’s no point in starting; it might not be good enough; I’ll
wait until I’m inspired; I don’t feel well; I’m too tired right now; I’m not in
the mood; I’ve done the worst part of it; the final bit won’t take much time so
I can do it later.
And the book
encourages you to monitor what’s happening for a week and try an experiment…
which is what I did.
MY ONE-WEEK PROCRASTINATION
AND WRITING EXPERIMENT
The authors
recommend that you
· Select a single goal –with a desire
to learn from both success and failure (think like a researcher gathering data
rather than a critic passing judgement) –I
used to be a researcher so this appealed to me and made it seem like it was
less personal;
· List the steps (and do a reality
check –can all those things be done in the time you have?) It was going to be full-on, but yes, it was realistic –if I
didn’t procrastinate;
· What’s the very first step? –write it
down; should be small and easy;
· Get feedback from others –perhaps other
writers- about the achievability of the goal;
· Consider the feelings you have now
you’ve got your goal –excited and scared;
· Could visualise your progress;
optimise chances (where you work and when, etc) –this one is never going to work for me as I don’t visualise, but it
could help other people;
· Stick to the time limit;
· Don’t wait until you feel like it –this was going to be a challenge, as not
feeling like I’m in quite the right mood for writing is one of my biggest
excuses.
And this is
what they suggested you do during the week:
·
Watch out for your excuses –an excuse
means you’re at a choice point: you can procrastinate or you can act (so go
from ‘I’ll do it later’ to ‘I’ll just to fifteen minutes…’ (and think –how do I
feel?) –I kept a journal for the week,
writing at the beginning and the end of each day, saying how I felt before I
started, and then commenting on the day at the end of each day.
· One step at a time (not the whole picture
book/novel) –I had a list of exactly what
I needed to do each day.
· Work around obstacles
· Reward yourself after progress
· Be prepared to be flexible if
necessary
· It doesn’t have to be perfect
At the end
of the week, assess your progress
· Examine your feelings
· Review your choice points (at least
you’ll have procrastinated more consciously)
I Identify what you've learned.
Now I chose
a really big goal as my children were going to be away for a whole week and I
really wanted to finish the novel I was working on, even though I had about
30,000 words left to write. It really doesn’t have to be that big at all (and
it was only possible because I was going to have a whole week without any
responsibilities, so I was in an unusual position).
I went
through the list of scenes I had left to write and calculated how long I
thought each scene would take, realistically if I didn’t procrastinate at all,
and then worked out how many I’d have to write each day in order to finish the
book. This worked out at about six hours per day –IF I didn’t procrastinate at
all but just wrote.
And then I
kept a journal for that week and just did exactly what I had said I’d do,
thinking of myself like a dispassionate researcher, monitoring how I felt and
what I did when I felt like I really didn’t want to write a certain part (or
any part).
And…
(Shame that I accidentally forgot to colour in three of the scenes on the final day but I did finish them. Honest)
I finished!
I wrote more than 30,000 in a single week!
I had never
written anything like the amount I wrote that week. And I am convinced that I
wouldn’t have been able to do it without the procrastination book. But the most
interesting thing to come out of it for me was that the excuse I’ve used so
much as a writer:
I’m not in
the right mood
was irrelevant
to what I wrote. When I feel like I’m not in the mood (or when I use that
excuse), I often find some other work to do instead of writing. But this time,
I didn’t. I just monitored how I was feeling, acknowledged it, and then did it
anyway. And what I found from my notes on the experiment was that the times
when I did it when I wasn’t in the mood, I was just as productive as the times
when I did feel in the mood, and having read all those scenes now (as part of
the whole book), there is no difference in how good those scenes were. This is
probably the most important thing I’ve learned from the whole process: I did
genuinely think that there were times when I was going to write better and
times when I was going to write less well (or not at all) because of my mood –but
it really didn’t make a difference –
as long as I
made myself do it.
I have had
to abandon my romantic notion of the muse being present. It really was –for me-
just a case of showing up and doing it. And I genuinely didn’t quite believe
that –until I did the experiment.
I
should just point out that this related to writing ‘up’ the novel once I’d done
all the creative plotting, which I couldn’t work on in this way of a certain
number of hours a day for a week, at all –not yet, anyway… But once I’ve worked
out a structure for a picture book or a novel, I know now that any excuse that
I am just not in the mood, is exactly that: an excuse.
There’s a
lot more useful stuff in the book, which I can’t go into now as there’s no
time, which includes suggested techniques to reduce your procrastination, like:
using little bits of time (check out their unscheduled on page 198); have an accountability
partner (I have for writing, and it’s great); work together (for example, like
we do in our local SCBWI group, weekly, where we write alongside each other); say
no to e-addictions/have a low information diet; do more exercise, and take
exercise breaks; be realistic about time; just get started; use the next
fifteen minutes, watch for your excuses and use your procrastination as a
signal. In the end, it’s your choice:
You can
delay or you can write
-and you can write even though you’re
uncomfortable.
I really couldn’t recommend this book highly enough -for picture book writers, novel writers, everyone. And if I can identify why I’m coming up with excuses and learn to put those thoughts and feelings aside and write anyway, then you can do it, too.
Huge thanks to my wonderful friend and former partner-in-procrastination Caroline Keenan for recommending this book to me. You know me well!
Do you have
any tips for beating procrastination? Have you read this book, and if so, how
helpful did you find it? Please do reply in the comments, below…
Thank you –and
happy writing –even if, or especially if, it’s uncomfortable!
www.julietclarebell.com
9 comments:
Hi Clare, thanks for this post ..it's come at a very timely point for me. At the moment I seem to be doing everything except sitting down and writing new stories and it's the one thing I know I really should be doing. Somehow the school visit arranging, social media, marketing bits seem to be taking all my attention but I suspect, deep down, I'm just procrastinating! I shall definitely give your tips a try!
Thank you, Lucy. It's really worth getting hold of the book and checking the 'unschedule'. It's worth the time to read it for the improvement in productivity you can get if you try it... Good luck x
Thanks Juliet - great and thought-provoking post. I find doing comedy impro really helps with the 'but I have nothing in my head to write about' feeling - you just have to trust there is something in there, and usually there is! Time juggling is hard, though. Sometimes the only solution for me is to get out of the house (or, as you've recently had, get the kids out of the house!), whether that's for an hour in a cafe, or a few days on a writing retreat.
We've talked about trying to get some comedy improv session for writers for exactly this. I think it would be great. Good luck getting some time to write! Clare x
Thanks for this, Clare! I'd already bought the book on your previous recommendation, though I did procrastinate reading it for a while.... I'm about half way through and have found it very helpful, particularly the section on fear of success. It's so true what you say about mood - I've written chapters when I've
had a bad night's sleep and was grumpy, but that did not affect the quality of the writing at all.
Hi Donna, I found the stuff on fear of success really interesting, too... Glad your writing's still working when you're grumpy! I was genuinely surprised to find I was as productive when in a not-feeling-it mood.
Great post Juliet, thank you. Your procrastination theme seems to have gone in. Each time an excuse arises I've been thinking of your post and has inspired me to take up the challenge and try the experiment myself. What's to lose?
Hi Gary, I hope you've tried it and that it's been successful for you? It's carried on working with me, which is quite something -a big part of keeping it up now with me is an accountability partner (fellow children's author) where we skype once a week and go through what we've done and what we're going to do. It's scary but great. Really good luck. Clare.
I think developed a new and obscure form of procrastination, meta-procrastination.
I developed a lot of excuses for procrastinating, during the years, no matter I had to drop college, quit jobs and survive long unemployment periods, but overtime, the more I try to fight against my excuses, the more I use the fight itself as an excuse to procrastinate. So now I procrastinate with the excuse that I am a procrastinator and need to mentally fight procrastination.
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