Writer's Procrastination
Creative Process or Fear?

I'm suffering not so much from writer's block as writer's procrastination. I was supposed to work on a chapter last weekend. Instead, I went into my backyard and read Trebor Healey's new poetry collection. Then I wrote a review of it. Then I picked up Justin Chin's Attack of the Man Eating Lotus Blossoms. And suddenly, it was late Sunday evening. I managed to have something else to do every night during the week, but I promised myself that I'd sit down and work on the chapter this weekend. Thus far this Saturday, I've mopped the kitchen floor and made a shopping list.

I'm beginning to suspect that there's a reason why I don't want to get into this chapter. I'm not afraid to write a terribly crappy first draft. I give myself permission to write poorly the first time around, because it's so freeing. This isn't a high drama chapter, but it isn't dull. I know what has to happen. So why oh why can't I get into it? Anyone else have this problem? How do you get around it?    —Kathleen Bradean

You can't build a reputation on what you are going to do.  —Henry Ford (1863 - 1947)

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From Mike Kimera
This happens to me often. It usually means that I'm still mulching what I want to write. It sometimes means that I don't have the energy to write yet. It can also mean that writing is turning into a chore when I want it to be an escape. I have three strategies:

1. Ride it out until I'm so frustrated with myself that I HAVE to write the chapter
2. Skip a chapter and write the next.
3. Write something else instead.

From Odo Nevyn
Chocolate at the keyboard. Chocolate is the answer to all things. Also, I get up and walk around a lot.

From Amanda Earl
I pretty much do what Mike does. I try to write every day, but there are days where I'm just not in the mood for either of those, so I'll work on other writing tasks like a poetry review or interview, or just a curmudgeonly letter to my local paper. I also take the opportunity to switch my pattern. Normally I write from about 7am to 1pm every day, then I read, nap and go for walks in the afternoons, but when I feel myself avoiding a piece of writing, I change my pattern, have my walkabouts and reading sessions in the morning and then write in the afternoons and evenings.

There's a wonderful book by SARK (I love this woman!) called Make Your Creative Dreams Real: A Plan for Procrastinators, Perfectionists, Busy People, and People Who Would Rather Sleep All Day. She says that her experiences as a "recovering procrastinator and perfectionist" make her understand how they work to delay creative dreams, and why that's sometimes good. She's got a great chapter about the land of no and what stops you.

The other book I'd recommend is Chris Batty's No Plot, No Problem. He wrote it for National Novel Writing Month (Nanowrimo), which takes place in November. He gives advice about how to stop worrying about perfection, how to write a compelling book that's character driven and all kinds of other tidbits to help one move along. I read it before I did Nanowrimo and it really helped me a lot. I never thought I'd be able to write 50,000 words in one month, and I ended up writing 55,000 before the deadline.

My own musing on this is that sometimes when I'm procrastinating, there's a reason and once I deal with that, I can usually move on.

From Virginia Leonard
I believe I've discovered why I procrastinate. I'm afraid. Afraid that it's going to be awful or sound stupid. What I haven't quite figured out how to do is get over that fear. Natalie Goldberg's book, Writing Down the Bones is helping and I'm trying to follow her advice.

Just write. Whatever comes into your head—just let it flow and eventually you'll find your story.

From Jane Black
Dr. Sue O'Doherty guest-blogs on MJ Rose's blog sometimes, and she answers questions from writers. I liked her response to the below question on procrastination, and was reminded of it by Jill's email about writer's block. Thought I'd share it here. The Doctor is In

From Barbara LM Handley
Anne Lamott wrote Bird by Bird, which in another great book on writing and contains my favorite tip ever on how to avoid being sued for libel. It's not a writing book, specifically, but you might find Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway to be helpful. I haven't found that the fear goes away by any magic method other than by doing the thing.

From Amanda Earl
It doesn't sound stupid at all to admit being afraid of putting down in paper what's in your head. I think most of us have that fear. In fact, the author Andre Alexis described that very same thing in a piece he did for "The Writing Life: Celebrated Canadian and International Authors on Writing and Life." He was struggling with the writing of Asylum, a book he almost abandoned because he couldn't translate the perfection in his head to paper:

"...what I mean by 'perfection' is something like 'the achievement of an exact correspondence between the work as conceived and the work as executed.' "

In his mind, the achievement of perfection would prove he was a writer. Until he abandoned that version of perfection, he couldn't finish writing his novel Asylum. He quotes a poem by W.S. Merwin called Berryman about an encounter with the poet John Berryman who had been Merwin's teacher at Princeton:

I asked how can you ever be sure
that what you write is really
any good at all and he said you can't

you can't you can never be sure
you die without knowing
whether anything you wrote was any good
if you have to be sure don't write

From Racy Li
I'm not a very linear writer to begin with and I'm not an outlining kind of a writer either ( but I have a rough idea of what's suppose to going to happen), but when that happens to me, I just skip the scene/chapter and write the next part. Then later on, I'll come back to it and write the scene.

I find this a much more effective use of my time. The important thing is to keep writing. Once I've written ahead, I usually have a much better idea of what needs to happen in the scene that I was avoiding.

Of course, the other thing that could possibly be happening is that you're not writing it because you think that scene is boring. If it's boring for you to write it, it will be boring for others to read (I've done this before). Skip it and just move on to the next one.

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