I thought that I had used all the procrastination excuses in the world.

“My Curtains look creased – I must iron them immediately.”

“If I don’t send this scratch card I got in a newspaper which says I have won £100,000 (or a mug with a picture of a fish on it) then I might miss the deadline and be poor forever.”

‘I think today… I really need to focus on my feng shui.’

Oh yes, I had come up with many excuses over the years, as I proudly convinced myself to be about half as productive as I could be each and every day. ✨

However, all those excuses paled in significance when a new little bundle of joy came into my life.

If you ever want to do no writing, get a puppy. Get a puppy now.

The great thing about using a puppy as an excuse for writing procrastination is that you really do need to focus a lot of time and energy on them. Otherwise they will chew through your laptop cable, get electrocuted and die. Plus they are super cute to look at, and cuddle, and dress up in hats.

Obviously, you can’t BLAME your puppy for being the reason why you are doing no work; it’s not their fault they are so adorable and helpless. And of course you can’t BLAME yourself either – the puppy needs you, the puppy must be watched at all times, the puppy was incredibly expensive and is non-returnable, so you need to make sure it stays alive.

Of course, the problem with a puppy, unlike curtains which will always need ironing, is that it grows up. What used to be a gorgeous dopey-eyed bundle of fur becomes a scraggy pudgy bag of farts – with fairly severe halitosis to boot. Plus they kind of stop needing you all the time (how fast they grow up) and so the whole ‘I’m doing this to keep it alive’ theory starts to feel pretty unconvincing.

The problem with writing procrastination is that as long as we are doing something we deem to be necessary and worthwhile, we can keep those feelings of guilt at bay (for a while at least). It’s only when you get to the end of the day and note that you have achieved nothing apart from creaseless soft furnishings that you start to feel as though there were probably better things you could have done with your time.

So how do we combat writing procrastination?

To get to the bottom of why we procrastinate our writing, we need to understand why we do it.

There can be several root causes:

We actually don’t like writing (and that’s OK).

You don’t have to like writing, you know. In fact, if you want to, you can stop doing it altogether. (She says, eliminating the competition one article at a time). Sometimes people keep writing because they think they have to. They believe that if they give up on their ‘dream’, they are letting themselves down and can never truly be happy.

But it is OK to take stock from time to time and think to yourself, ‘do I actually want to do this anymore?’

Dreams and passions change. What we wanted for ourselves when we were 20 isn’t the same as what we want for ourselves when we are 40. If you are always looking for excuses not to write, maybe it’s because you don’t want to anymore.

Fill your time with things you love to do, and you’ll know you are doing the right things for you. Just think how freeing it could be to say ‘Oh I actually don’t want to do this anymore, what do I want to do?’
We are scared of writing.

Writing can be painful and frightening. When you write you are basically being vain, self-indulgent and self-obsessed.

You are also incredibly vulnerable.

It’s an odd juxtaposition because if you share your writing with the world, you are basically saying, ‘hey! Look at what I did! It’s good, right? Is it good? Umm hello? Someone, please, tell me it’s good!’

It’s kind of needy when you think about it, and so it’s understandable that we sometimes shy away from sharing our writing in the first place.

However, if you don’t, you run the risk becoming one of ‘those’ writers, you know – the ones who talk incessantly about writing yet are too precious to share it with anyone. The ones who seem sullen and irritating and weirdly arrogant, despite the truth being that they are probably crippled by insecurities and fear (and just wear those tartan suits and rainbow loafers because they are comfy, not because they think of themselves as an ‘artist’).

We need to believe in ourselves enough to think that writing should be a priority.

Writing might mean facing up to who you are. When you write you can’t help but explore emotions that you’ve felt, and situations that have meant something to you. Even in the most fictionalized books, an author reveals something about themselves through the story and the characters they create. So it’s tough to put that out there. The potential for rejection is brutal and relentless – kind of like being beaten up and then getting on a bouncy castle over and over again. You might be fine, just don’t fall ov…oh.

However, you also need just to stop being a big baby. Doing things that scare you is part of what makes life exhilarating, what helps you grow, what makes you feel alive.

As the great comedian George Burns rightly said: “I honestly think it is better to be a failure at something you love than to be a success at something you hate.” Or, as the great* writer Bethany Cadman said: “just stop being a big baby.”

Is Writing Procrastination Just Laziness?

Writing isn’t easy. It’s kind of like a gym session. The good stuff comes at the end after the hard work is over. Getting yourself in the mindset to go to the gym is hard, especially if there are those two little devils Cake and Netflix whispering in your ear.

Being at the gym makes you self-conscious, sweaty and out of breath. But post gym, oh sweet post gym! You feel elated, proud and totally committed to doing it all again tomorrow as you wobble your slightly less wobbly self all the way home.

Writing is the same. We try all sorts of bizarre methods to wriggle our way out of it. When we’re doing it, we feel self-conscious, sweaty, and yes, even a little breathless at times. But oh my! The feeling once we have finished that next chapter or written that extra 1000 words – it’s pretty unbeatable, and the more we do it, the more we want to.

So really what you need to ask yourself is what would you rather be doing? Following your dreams, writing your little heart out and finishing the day feeling like your own personal cheerleader? Or giving in to Norman Netflix and Cassandra Cake and ending the day beating yourself up while berating your chubby, crumb-covered face and softly weeping into a pillow?

My beautiful puppy is old and fat now. No one has ever complimented me on the straightness of my curtains. I have moved my furniture around so many times I think it’s the same as when I started.

I love writing, even though sometimes I wish I didn’t. So now it’s time to get down to the writing gym of life, stop procrastinating and just get on with it! Will I see you there?

*I am great at writing, my mother told me so.

What are the weird and wonderful ways that you procrastinate? Or your tricks and tips to combat procrastination? I’d love to hear them!

I spoke to someone the other day. Someone that wasn’t there.

Now before you reassure me that talking to your characters is OK. That, in fact, every writer from time to time has a held a little tête-à-tête with the people in their book just to check how their doing, and make sure they are still on the same page, it wasn’t that. I just said something, out loud, but there was no one else in the room.

It took me a while to realise the gravity of the situation. My partner was away on business. I’d done a big food shop before he went, so the kitchen cupboards were stuffed full of supplies, and apart from grunting merrily at fellow dog walkers when going on a daily jaunt with Bert (the happiest cocker spaniel in the world), I realised I hadn’t actually spoken to another human being in three days.

So when I said something aloud in the kitchen that day, it worried me. It wasn’t so much the fact that I had spoken, more that the sound of my own voice startled me. Like I, for the merest of moments, had forgotten what another human being sounded like.

Looking back I realised it wasn’t the first occasion something like this had happened. Since becoming a full-time writer, there have been numerous times when I have accidentally failed to leave the house for a few days. Washing has also become something I consider far less necessary than before. I get up at 6 am, have a nap after lunch, and work into the night – becoming increasingly disheveled, wide-eyed and skittish-looking as each hour goes by.

But perhaps this is something that I need to change before it’s too late.

Madness in literature

There have been plenty of instances of madness in literature. It’s not just wildly insane characters, but rather the many authors who created them that have suffered an unquiet mind. Look at Plath, who became so depressed she put her head in an oven and succumbed to its deadly fumes, J.D Salinger, who spent much of his life cooped up inside the buildings and grounds of his estate which was heavily guarded by dogs and enclosed by high walls, or Charles Dickens who, in his later years, became rather obsessed with the occult.

Yes, there are plenty of examples of writers going mad, and I wonder, was it because they just forgot to talk to other people?

Writing is, by its nature, a very solitary experience. This is particularly true for the novelist. It is rare that one requires the services of anyone else. Especially now, being able to access information about anything and everything as quickly as your fingers can type it into Google, you don’t need to actually talk to anyone to research your book. You can find out everything you need to know online, and the rest of it, well you’re just making it up, so communicating with anyone becomes an unnecessary distraction.

There is, of course, a danger in this, and not just because it is all too easy to find yourself having gone three days without changing your pants. Or because your dog is pawing at you for a walk as you sit, hunched and pungent, typing furiously away, without stopping to look up, and pause for a moment to appreciate the disgusting reality of the situation.

No no, the price one pays for this voluntary solitary confinement is far greater – it can make you a worse writer.

Getting too wrapped up in your own little writing world can be tempting. When we are truly immersed in our writing, the universe outside our front door can all but disappear. This is both a gift and a curse. To be so involved that hours can pass like seconds is a sure-fire indicator that you are onto something great. However, if you become too detached from reality, how can you hope to improve?

Surely it is by communicating with others, by meeting new people, by having different experiences, and traveling to different places both near, and far that we get inspiration for our writing? Without keeping our feet firmly on planet earth and getting out there and exploring all it has to offer how can we expect to write stories to which other people can relate? Writers ask their readers to trust them, that they will guide them into a world that is believable and tell them a story that they have not heard before. But if they have no experience of the world, and what it is like to live in it, how can they expect to achieve that?

The same goes for writers who refuse to share their work. If you keep your ideas, your creativity, and your work all to yourself you deny yourself the opportunity to get better. Sharing your work with the outside world, and getting feedback can change and improve your writing more than you ever thought possible. If you never let anyone see it until it is perfect, you run the risk of it becoming so precious to you that the day never comes.

In short, don’t be a Sméagol.

Sméagol found something beautiful, bright and shiny and instead of sharing it with others, he kept it a secret, a secret that led him to live a life in the shadows, deep underground where he grew increasingly pale, straggly of hair and mentally disturbed. Writers may find themselves clutching onto their ideas and their writing and snarling at anyone who gets too close. But if we don’t break free of that, it can be all too easy for our ‘precious’ writing to become something we cannot relinquish, and all of a sudden it’s too late – and then one day we find that we are living in a cave, talking to ourselves and shoving still-alive fish into our insane, dribbling mouths.

Creativity and Madness

Of course, lots of people think that perhaps creativity and madness go hand in hand. There has undoubtedly been a lot of research on the subject. The notion of the ‘mad artist’ has been mentioned by thinkers as early as Aristotle, who wrote:

‘Those who have been eminent in philosophy, politics, poetry, and the arts have all had tendencies toward melancholia.’

Many Shakespearian plays also allude to this fact, for example, this line from A Midsummer Night’s Dream:

‘The lunatic, the lover, and the poet / Are of imagination all compact.’

Does creativity require a certain loosening of one’s grip on reality? Perhaps. Certainly using one’s imagination, at times, requires a suspension of disbelief. Many writers travel through eras and into worlds that are not wholly their own. In fact, they don’t travel through them; they create them.

Creating believable worlds, however, does mean you have to live in one. Writers are weavers of unique universes and tall tales, but keeping our feet firmly on the ground is important.

Because of this, perhaps next time I find myself jumping at the sound of my own voice, I will make sure I switch off my laptop, get out there, and go and have a conversation with someone. I’ll look at something ace in nature, sit on a bus and eavesdrop on conversations, or just talk to a dear old friend. Just be out there, living, breathing, and taking it all in.

This way the next time I want to create a fictional world, I’ll be able to take all the things I have seen and done and design one that I genuinely believe in, and, really, that’s what it’s all about. Because if I don’t believe in the worlds I create, then why should anyone else?