Receiving rejections is part and parcel of any writer’s life. You know the old saying, if you haven’t been rejected, you can’t call yourself a real writer. Just like you’ll never know pain until you’ve gone through childbirth/been kicked in the nuts. Or, you’ll never understand what hard work is like unless you’ve been down the mines, gone to war, or stood for 12 hours weighing raw fish on a factory line while listening to the same Christmas mixtape on repeat for the entire duration (true story).

Rejection is a rite of passage, so much so that we are almost taught to celebrate it. Wear it like a badge of honour. Yes, apparently I should be happy that someone told me that my book wasn’t publishable in an impersonal (dear writer) one line email that does not explain as to why the project I’ve poured my heart and soul into for the past year and a half is not worth reading. That’s wonderful! Thanks for letting me know in the coldest, most brutal way ever.

Rejection is ‘subjective.’

We cheer ourselves up with tales of how Harry Potter got rejected 800 billion times, or how a publisher told Ernest Hemingway that his efforts were “both tedious and offensive.” We revel in the fact that quite a lot of people think 50 Shades of Grey is a giant bag of garbage, and yet who’s sitting on a big pile of cash feeling probably a bit smug? Not them. We remind ourselves that writing is subjective, that it’s only one person’s opinion. We comfort ourselves in the knowledge that just because this one person doesn’t like it, doesn’t mean that someone who is more aligned with our sensibilities and has a much better nose for true talent won’t find our work the charming, engaging, entertaining piece of magic that it so obviously is.

But isn’t it time we were brutally honest with ourselves? More often than not if we get rejected it isn’t because the book wasn’t ‘quite right for their list’ it’s because the book wasn’t good enough. Editors and agents have one job, and that’s to spot a brilliant piece of writing, a story that will sell. OK, they might have their preferences, but if you’ve written something incredible, they aren’t going to reject it outright just because it might be a little different to the titles they usually publish.

I received what might be considered a ‘positive’ rejection the other day. A publisher had kindly taken the time to tell me that they very much ‘enjoyed’ reading my manuscript, that they thought it was ‘engaging’ and ‘well-written.’ At first, I was delirious, over the moon. I told anyone who would listen (such is the life of an attention-starved writer where even a slight compliment is something I’ll print out and frame like I’ve won some sort of important award). But then, the more I thought about it I realised it didn’t make any difference. I asked my fellow writers what they thought, some said I should be encouraged, others said it was probably still a generic response, in the end, we all agreed, it didn’t matter. The outcome was still the same, and my story wouldn’t be hitting the bookshelves any time soon.

The fact of the matter is, I want them to be brutal. I’d prefer it. It would be far more helpful if an agent thought my manuscript was a pile of old drivel to actually say that, use those exact words, tear me down, laugh at me if they must, but at least then I’d know the truth.

How helpful would it be if terrible writers were told how awful they were? For a start if you were a good one it means that you’d eliminate half the competition, agents and publishers would have more time to consider your work carefully, and perhaps be more willing to take a punt on an unknown author. If you decided to self-publish, your book would be more visible. Readers also may be more willing to trust that it was worth risking the devastating sum of $1.99 for the Kindle edition. This is because they wouldn’t have ever suffered the disappointment of doing so only to be faced with a story so terrible, so poorly written, so offensively boring that they wished they’d bought the paper copy so at least they could have used the pages as emergency loo roll.

Imagine if we were treated like contestants on the X factor. We’d nervously have to read out our work to a panel of literary experts, a live audience sitting behind them who’d just as much love us to be talented as to see our dreams crushed in as vicious and unsparing a way as possible. As the lights dim, we begin to read, falteringly at first, but then we find our feet, our confidence soaring, mum was right, we are amazing! We carry on, the ebb and flow of our lyrical voice filling the auditorium with our carefully crafted words, we’d be so carried away, so into it that…we don’t hear the boos. We see one of the judges, hand in the air to silence us, the other two hiding their faces behind their cue cards, sniggering. We stop. Then they let rip while the audience laughs and boos some more. Our hearts break, perhaps we shout an obscenity, then mic drop, and we’re out, never to write again.

Dealing with rejection – honesty is the best policy

Seriously though, if you are not good at writing wouldn’t you rather just know? I’ve got loads of other things I could be doing with my time, things that, you know, might actually make some money or could mean I spend more time with my family and friends in the sunshine rather than hunched over a desk refusing to speak to anyone until the sun goes down like some sort of cantankerous vampire?

Of course, this is never going to happen. Agents and publishers don’t have the time to give you actual feedback, nor the inclination to tell you to give up. Until they do, the problem with trying to become a published author is that there is always a chance. There is always the carrot dangling, just out of reach, but still ever present, above our heads. With any other job, there is usually a point where you’d say ‘enough is enough.’ If you’ve applied to be an [insert job title here] ten times and never even got an interview, you might think about switching up your career ambitions. With writing, however, it is possible to be rejected 800 billion times, just like Harry Potter was, and then go on to become about 800 billion times richer than any other author just like J.K. Rowling is. If you do get rejected over and over again, you can still self-publish, and it might even be considered by most to be a big bag of garbage, yet you can still make a fortune, entertain and delight people and basically feel pretty pleased with yourself.

So, perhaps, when it comes to rejection, it is time we stopped romanticising it, but also time we stopped paying much attention to it at all. After all, it is what it is, the result is still the same, and all we can do is try, try again.

Bethany Cadman is a freelance writer and author of Doctor Vanilla’s Sunflowers

Making New Year’s resolutions has always been a bit of an oddity to me.

You come out of the festive season in a blur. Too many late nights, too many lunchtime drinks, too many handfuls of peanuts on the way to the fridge to get more cheese. You eat, drink and be merry, you forget about your troubles, your work, your diet, and yes, even your writing.

Then the clock strikes midnight on December the 31st and suddenly, like a bunch of pork-pie laden Cinderella’s we are supposed to scuttle off to bed and wake up in the morning full of motivation, determination, and inspiration to make this year the greatest one yet.

It’s a pretty big ask.

That’s not to say that New Year’s resolutions don’t have their place. Particularly for writers who need goals and structure and something to keep them on the right track. However, expecting to suddenly be a whole new person just because the date changed is unrealistic, and that’s why so many people fail at their New Year’s resolutions before they’ve even got started.

You wanted to go vegetarian, not drink alcohol and write at least 500 words every day but on the first of January when you find yourself clutching a bacon sandwich, drinking a Bloody Mary and snoozing in front of Disney films all day while scoffing the last of the mince pies it feels as though you’ve started the new year on something of a back foot.

Setting New Year’s resolutions should be fun. They should be positive and motivational and make you want to do them. Too restrictive, too painful, too sudden and you are just setting yourself up for failure.

With that in mind here are some 2019 New Year’s writing resolutions that might tick those boxes:

To learn about writing in better ways

Writers are often told that writing is a skill. It can be studied; it is something you can get better at. However, there is nothing worse than forcing yourself to learn about something that doesn’t interest you.

We’re all grownups, we’ve left our school days behind, so studying only works if you do it right. Writers already find it challenging enough to fit in getting words on the page let alone giving themselves lessons in the art of writing on top of this.

However, learning can be fun, and there are ways to trick yourself into studying the craft without making it feel like studying at all. Reading, for a start, is an excellent way to learn about writing and is one of the most pleasurable, relaxing, exciting and inspiring hobbies imaginable.

Talking of hobbies, why don’t you get out there and learn some cool new stuff? Experiences make writer’s writing better. Life is a brilliant and utterly insane source of inspiration – so if you don’t want to spend your days scowling over a textbook trying to perfect your grammar then don’t. Make your writing brilliant because you’ve lived an adventurous life. Get Grammarly to correct your work, or hire an editor, or just don’t bother because life is too short.

To be more specific and goal-orientated when you write

Writers often get nowhere with their goals because they make them too damn hard, or too damn large not to feel massively overwhelmed by them.

Goals aren’t supposed to make you feel depressed or swamped or panicky. They are meant to be exciting and energising and realistic and achievable. So don’t make your writing goal to ‘finish your book.’ That doesn’t mean anything. Instead, try something else. ‘To get a short story published in the New Yorker by 2020.’ Then work out the steps that are necessary to make it happen, and go for it hell-for-leather.

To write while wearing a cape!

Have you heard of the power pose? Well, it’s been proven (mostly) that if you stand or sit in a power pose for as little as two minutes, you could feel more powerful, more motivated and generally do better in life (I might be paraphrasing here). The study conducted by Amy Cuddy suggested that those who took on high-power poses showed an increase in testosterone (the sexy power hormone) and a decrease in cortisol (the horrible stressy hormone).

OK so you don’t actually have to write while wearing a cape, but adopting your own version of the power pose (or just doing it) means you are looking inward to find your own superhero.

Writers should be proud of themselves for the example they are setting – to their kids, their friends, the world. The stuff it takes to be a writer, whether a massively celebrated and successful one or a struggling but determined slightly crappy one is remarkable and it’s well worth remembering that.

To be a kinder writer

Kindness is rarely talked about in writing, but being a kinder writer can bring with it lots of benefits. For a start, make a promise to be kinder to yourself. Be strong and healthy, be courageous and determined, go easy on yourself when things don’t go your way. Allow yourself time to grieve and heal and rest. Allow yourself time to do other things. Reevaluate regularly and make sure that whatever you are doing – writing or otherwise – is making you happy. Because there is nothing more important than that.

But kindness can also be extended beyond the realm of your writing room. Why not make a promise to be kinder to your fellow writers too? Make some writing friends (be that virtual or fleshy), be encouraging, share your work, get feedback, buy their books, leave positive reviews, start discussions, have fun.

You know how great it is when someone bothers to get in touch with you, when they buy your book or when they leave you a helpful review. If you want that to happen for you why not start the ball rolling? Pay it forward.

Buy one book a month from an unknown author – that’s a writing resolution we all could do with sticking to.

To talk about your writing more

Don’t be afraid to talk about your writing. It’s all too easy to feel like we are hassling people (even our nearest and dearest) when we ask them to read what we have written, to buy our book, even just to tell them about our day. But this year, let’s make an effort to talk about our and others writing as often and as eagerly and as passionately as we can.

If you truly love writing then share that enthusiasm with everyone – writing, creativity, reading, imagination – they are all gifts, and so let’s celebrate them accordingly.

These writing resolutions are ones that every writer can stick to.

Do you have any you’d like to add? I’d love to hear from you!

Whenever I read writing advice, one thing that comes up time and time again is writing confidence – and the fact that writers don’t seem to have any. That our lack of conviction is our biggest obstacle and that only if we were able to believe we weren’t entirely dreadful at what we do we’d be on our way to fame and fortune in the blinkety blink of an eye.

Now I’m sure you’ve heard of a self-fulfilling prophecy, and that’s what I think is happening here.

The more we writers read about how scary it is to be one, how bitterly cruel rejection is, how we will have to keep picking our broken, battered, soppy-eyed egos off the floor without any real hope of it being better the next time around, the less confident we get, the more hopeless it all seems and the more helpless we feel to take back control.

I do not deny that writing is hard, but so is any job that’s worth doing. Writer’s need to shake off this assumption that we need our hands held and our fragile egos massaged or that we’ll retreat to a state of miserable, tortured isolation if things don’t go our way. In short, people need to stop treating writers like children and instead like the smart, creative businesspeople that they are.

Imagine a writer telling you that they are good at writing. Imagine it! How very daring that someone who has been practicing their profession for years and who dedicates themselves to learning and improving has any sort of impression that they might be competent at what they do. How arrogant! How obscene! Why do writers have to be seen as these shy, rather pathetic little creatures, “oh please sir would you kindly mind just taking the very briefest of glimpses at my manuscript? No? How very silly of me for asking sir. No problem sir, thank you very much for your time.” [backs into the shadows weeping softly].

Writing confidence – why the shortage?

So who is to blame for this continued infantilization of writers? In short, it’s everyone.

There’s all this talk of how we should be more self- confident that we should believe in our dreams, and not let that blinding b’tard of an inner critic take over and ruin our potential to be the next big thing. But the reality is, it’s not necessarily writer’s themselves that are to blame. Instead let’s point the finger at the people in the industry, our teachers, our colleagues, and yes, even our nearest and dearest family and friends.

People who mock or patronise you when you tell them what you are trying to achieve are particularly guilty. You know the ones whose eyes glaze over, and voices go up a notch when you tell them you’re a writer — the ones who sigh ‘ohhhhhh good for you” while peering over your shoulder desperate for a conversational escape.

Then there are the teachers who smirked when you said you wanted to be a writer and carried on pushing you to make decisions and study subjects that you hated because they would get you a ‘real’ job. Or perhaps that delightful individual at a dinner party who thinks it is ever so helpful to start telling you the depressing statistics of how unlikely it is that you’ll ever be published.

Oh, then there is the person who once said to me ‘the best thing you can do for your career is to die.’

Thanks for that, I’ll think about it.

People don’t ask us questions; they are afraid to. What if we’ve been writing for 20 years and never been published? What if we ask them to read our book and they hate it? We’re like a kid who’s done a crappy finger painting that you have to put on your fridge for weeks on end or that feigned interest you must conjure when your child presents you with a bottle of homemade ‘perfume’ they’ve created from rotten flower petals and puddle water. It’s just easier to pat us on the head and say ‘well done you’ and then move on as swiftly as possible.

Then, of course, there is your nearest and dearest. The friends and relatives who refuse to take you seriously or never quite get round to reading anything you’ve written. Of course, they find it perfectly acceptable to force you to listen to them droning on for hours on end about a spreadsheet-related disaster and what an idiot Sandra from HR is. But dare you ask them for a few hours of their valuable time to share something that’s truly important to you and suddenly they literally don’t have a spare minute. How convenient.

People act like we can’t handle rejection, and yeah, it hurts, but believe it or not we’ve all got our big boy pants on, and we don’t mind it if someone doesn’t like what we’ve written. We aren’t stupid. We know it’s tough. We know that we’ve got more to learn. That there is loads of competition out there and even if our writing is quite good it doesn’t mean that publishers and agents are going to want to try and sell it to the masses.

Writer’s should be seen and not heard, or should they just disappear altogether?

Being ignored by agents, publishers and the rest world is another way writers are treated as though they aren’t yet old enough to join in with adult conversation. It’s a kind of rudeness that if applied in almost any other situation would be considered entirely unacceptable.

Oh, you are inundated with proposals. That’s fine. It’s great that agents and publishers are managing our expectations and all, but the bare minimum they could do is to take a moment to craft an actual, personal reply. Telling us to wait on the edge of our seats for months on end but to be aware if a certain time frame passes we’ve definately been rejected. Come on. Writer’s spend months, even years writing and editing their work, then spend way too much time fretting over drafting a perfectly crafted, expertly researched proposal just for you, and you can’t even take the time to say thanks but no thanks?

But it’s not just fiction writers that deal with this rudeness and patronisation. Freelance writers bear the brunt of it too. Some of the jobs I’ve seen suggest a wage that equates to a paperboy’s round in the 1950s. Then there are the delightfully condescending job posts – ‘make sure you don’t plagiarise otherwise we won’t pay you.’ It’s the equivalent of telling someone off you suspect might cheat on a test or copy someone else’s homework before you’ve even given them a chance to do it.

Most writers have more going on in their lives than just writing. We have partners, kids, dogs, other interests; you know just other stuff we need to get on with. We are grown men and women with lives and responsibilities, and we can’t afford to lock ourselves in the bathroom and have a meltdown if things don’t go our way.

Writing confidence grows as writers learn more about the craft, but despite this most of them write fully aware that they’ll never get published, but they do it anyway because they love it. Isn’t that amazing? So perhaps it’s time to recognise that, to focus on the courage and strength and general grrrrrrrrr it takes to be a writer and to stop treating them like children and applaud them for being the powerful, determined people they are.

It occurred to me the other day, as I once again lamented not shifting last year’s Christmas wobble to at least give me some leeway for this year’s festivities, that I tend to spend a lot of time and money preparing for things that are ‘definitely’ going to change my life, instead of just plunging right in and doing them.

I decide to get fit. I, therefore, must buy some new trainers, a cool running outfit (if I look stupid when I run people will laugh at me and I will stop running immediately), some new headphones which don’t fall out of my ears, and a Fitbit. I must join the gym and buy a juicer, and a recipe book on juicing, and the 4,000 fruits and vegetables required to make said juice.

I already have many cupboards in my home stuffed with what I like to refer to as ‘shame-shadows.’ You know, those things that follow you around from place to place reminding you of the time you tried to do something and failed. A deflated yoga ball that may have never, in fact, been inflated. Boxes of unopened nicotine patches (who uses nicotine patches now anyway?). A spiralizer that is impossible to clean, or at least so irritating it is certainly not worth the disappointment that comes with a bowl of courgetti. Clothes with the tags still on that I bought when feeling saucy and daring, and sometimes still try on from time to time, but naturally only in the safety of my own bedroom.

The same goes for my writing space. I read several insightful and useful articles on how important it is to create an ideal atmosphere to release my most creative self. A place where you feel tranquil and calm, yet also motivated and inspired. Somewhere you won’t be disturbed, where you can think, feel comfortable and let inspiration dance brightly before your eyes. Somewhere light, probably full of plants, and with the smell of fresh coffee lingering in the air. Somewhere you can laugh in the face of writer’s block because there is no way that you would ever not know what to write in such a perfect setting.

Eureka! I thought. Finally, a logical reason as to why I haven’t been writing as much as I want to – I just haven’t had the perfect writing space to inspire me.

The Perfect Writing Space – It Started With A Desk

I fell in love with a desk once. This desk was going to make me a better writer for sure. It was a beautiful shade of sailor blue, with adorable panels of blue and white flowers on its surface, decorative handles, and teeny, tiny, useless drawers. How I loved it so!

I saw it and knew straight away that this desk was going to be the one I would sit at as I wrote my first novel. The one that, when I became a famous bestselling author, would be taken to a museum somewhere and people would gasp in awe at it and say ‘ohhhhh’ that’s where she must have come up with the idea for [insert title of millionaire making bestselling novel here]. I can see why – that desk is just aaaamazing.’

So I had to have it.

It turned out the desk was actually annoyingly low which meant I couldn’t cross my legs underneath it, not large enough to put the notes and coffee cups and stationery required to have a proper writing session, and did I mention the teeny, tiny, useless drawers?

‘To hell with that’ I immediately thought and resumed my cross-legged Quasimodo position on the sofa. I still used the desk of course. It became a place to hold an ever-growing stack of bills I never looked at and mail I never opened until it was such a mess you couldn’t even see those adorable floral panels anymore.

I moved house recently, and I insisted it needed to have a room we could turn into a writing space for me, only adding a mere 300 or so pounds to our monthly rent. A small price to pay for a writing office where I would now, surely, unquestionably, write every day and get that big money-making book out there for the world to see.

The writing desk, of course, came with me. And it looked great. Did I use it? I did not. I preferred to wake up in the morning and grab my laptop from where I kept it, on the floor by my bed, and then work until so desperate for caffeine I would reluctantly go downstairs.

So I re-assessed the office and lo and behold had yet another eureka moment. It was the desk! The desk was the problem! How could I work at a desk that was too uncomfortable to sit at? It was outrageous, preposterous! What a silly, foolish girl I had been. New furniture was the answer, and perhaps a lovely plant, and a coffee machine and beautiful books to write in. It wasn’t my fault I wasn’t writing as much as I should, I just didn’t have the right space to do it in.

£180 later and the desk is gone, or more precisely shoved in the spare room. A vintage, super comfy tub chair has arrived, a tiny wooden table to put my coffee cup on, a walnut bookcase to stuff with books that inspire me, and a sheepskin rug to add a cosy, slightly Nordic vibe, because, well, why not?

The day after it was all set up I sat in my chair and wrote a few thousand words of my book, occasionally stopped to stare out of the window and generally felt very author-esque and smug. I quickly decided that I should only use this room for my creative writing, not my other writing work. But, of course, as the weeks passed, I sat in the room less and less, and now a few months on I find myself in the same position (that position being hunched on the sofa) as I was before.

I occasionally pop my head around the door of my writing room to admire it. My partner sometimes uses it to make business calls, but it is, for the most part, unused and neglected and completely unnecessary.

Is The Perfect Writing Space But An Impossible Dream?

Writers are dreamers, and so it’s understandable to have visions of oneself looking quietly, unassumingly sexy, probably with arty glasses on chewing a pen in a coffee shop, while scribbling into a leather-bound book – that doing this will somehow make us better writers. However, realistically, how many times can you be bothered to pack up all your stuff, walk outside of your home, find somewhere that doesn’t begrudge you sitting and working for hours despite only buying one drink, and getting paranoid your laptop will get nicked every time you want to go for a wee?

Similarly, there is this idea that writing in the ‘perfect’ writing space somehow makes you become a more prolific, more productive writer. The problem with trying to create the perfect writing space is that it can turn into a dangerous spiral down the rabbit hole. If things aren’t quite right in it (such as a writing desk that’s too low), it becomes your new excuse to avoid writing altogether.

The good news is I feel that I have finally accepted that I am not going to be that intelligent but slightly scruffy, lightly made up, wistful-looking writer in a coffee shop. Nor am I going to want to sit in the smallest room in the house with a chair that gives me a backache and is too far away from the kettle – however tastefully decorated. I write, as I always have done, unwashed and in my pyjamas – and I think I am finally okay with that.

So next time I move there won’t be a writing room, and the writing desk will be passed on to another writer, perhaps one who might use it, definitely one with slightly shorter legs.

I realise now that it’s not about creating the perfect writing space, it’s just about writing. No writing environment, no matter how glorious will make you write if you don’t want to. Besides, just think what I could spend that extra £300 a month on – a home gym perhaps?

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!