Help! I'm Procrastinating Writing By Writing!
And the Cat is No Help At All . . .
Dear Reader,
The best ways to Not Write are the ones that trick me into feeling smart. My favorite is a crossword, closely followed by Sudoku. In the past couple of weeks, I’ve also been playing a lot of Minesweeper, which in addition to wasting my writing time is also ruining my only pair of eyes. If I’m lucky, my procrastination will take the form of submitting poems and short stories to literary magazines, which, while productive and writing-adjacent, is still technically Not Writing.
Recently, I have discovered an even more insidious method of procrastination. I have been procrastinating writing . . . by writing.
Really, this is less about procrastination and more about priorities. I should be writing the umpteenth draft of BBGAS, my middle-grade fantasy novel. Unfortunately, there are a slew of things that are easier to write than a whole entire book, including but not limited to:
A poem
A short story
A Loose Baggy Monsters letter
Multiple poems
Multiple short stories
Multiple Loose Baggy Monsters letters
Worst of all is that, unlike Sudoku or Minesweeper, none of these things are a waste of time! I want to write poems and short stories! I want to write to you, Reader! But I need to finish this book.
(Maybe the idea of “finishing” is the problem. How do you know when a book is finished? I have thought BBGAS was finished several times before and it has repeatedly proven me wrong.)
Writing a poem or a piece of flash fiction is like having a fling. It’s exciting! It’s romantic! It’s short! Whereas writing a book is a long-term relationship. Sometimes I feel like the magic is dead—particularly problematic for a fantasy novel.
Here’s another metaphor, if you’re not sick of them yet: writing is like lifting weights. To make real progress, you have to be consistent. If you don’t use your muscles, you lose them. The good news is that I haven’t been neglecting exercise entirely—just certain muscle groups. If poems and short stories are my biceps and abs, while this book is my quads and calves, then I’m super jacked on top with teeny-tiny weak little legs.
What do I need to do to keep writing this book? I need to have fun with it—to play. I need to read more and scroll less. I need it to be any month other than February. I need to remember that I love this story and these characters, who only get to be alive when I pay them attention. With my full attention, they live full lives. A half-hearted attention is a half-hearted life. No attention at all . . . well. I don’t want that for them.
Ironically, writing this letter helped. Often, I feel myself leaning on these posts when I don’t want to work on something else, but putting words to this issue makes it feel more manageable. (Isn’t that just the rub: writing is the problem and the cure.) Yesterday morning, I sat down and got right to work on my book, putting the thing I wanted to do least first. It felt good. Not great—I’m out of practice and my muscles are sore—but I was proud of myself for doing it. I am always writing, even if my priorities are not always straight.
Thanks for reading.
Doggedly,
P.S. — Just this morning I came across this quote from Leo Tolstoy, courtesy of
’s slow read of War & Peace:If I were told I could write a novel in which I would set forth the seemingly correct attitudes towards all social questions, I would not devote even two hours of work to such a novel, but if I were told that what I write will be read in twenty years by the children of today and that they will weep and smile over it and will fall in love with life, I would devote all my life and all my strength to it.
Leave it to Tolstoy to find the magic words! May my book someday make children fall in love with life.
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