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Procrastination--Are You Guilty?
"Musings" - May 2007

by Margot Finke

If your dirty little secret is Procrastination, take heart. You have lots of company! Writers unfortunately seem to inherit an abundance of this "put it off until. . ." gene.

Let’s Look at Six Areas of Your Writing Life Most Affected by Procrastination

• Research for publishers
• Writing that important query letter
• Sending out that rejected manuscript again — ASAP
• Backing up your daily writing output — procrastinate at your peril!
• Sitting down at your computer and actually writing something.
• Reworking those chapters that everyone in your critique group said didn’t hook their interest.

Now, Look at the Excuses You Employ to Dodge the Inevitable

• Tidy your desk, house or closets.
• Shop for that oh-so-unnecessary dress.
• Lunch with a friend.
• Cook gourmet meals.
• Go to the beach.
• Begin another story — the idea just screams to be put in a book!

Ways to Inoculate Yourself Against Procrastination

• Hang out with writers who have beaten this disease. How do you tell who they are? Non-procrastinators have dust bunnies as pets, gardens that need weeding, husbands who cook, and kids that can be bribed to use a washing machine and a vacuum cleaner.
• Cut up your credit card. Until you sell that book, you don’t earn enough to shop-‘till-you-drop!
• Eat at home. The money you save NOT dining with friends will pay for lots of SASE stamps.
• Okay, create one gourmet meal a month. The rest of the time — WRITE!
• The beach is great! That’s what laptops are for, mate. WRITE!
• Compromise: make notes. Your brilliant ideas are safely stored, and you can continue as an active B.I C. (butt in chair) writer.

Serious Help For the Get-it-done Impaired

B.I.C. is a great start. You can’t write if you aren’t sitting in front of your keyboard. Now for the bad news: there is no wonder drug or cure. You have to jack up your passion to become published, until it is stronger than your "wimp out" gene. Moreover, no one trick works for everyone. You writers must scrounge around and find what works for you.

Oh yeah, I suffer with that lousy gene--in spades! What works best for me, is mentally taking myself by the scruff of the neck, and giving myself a good talking to. This injection of writerly passion and common sense usually keeps procrastination at bay--for a while.

Other De-procrastination Tricks You Can Try (no guarantees)

• Place B.I.C, and type anything that jumps into your mind. Some of the worst gobbledygook has been cleaned up and injected into a book.
• Ask your critique group, or online list members, for anti-procrastination help.
• Get involved with an online writing list. Discovering you are one of thousands with this disease will make you feel much better — not cured, but better!
• Ask the list about possible cures. Begin a daily "page" club for those like yourself. This means members write a page every day (nonsense, or Pulitzer Prize stuff. It doesn’t matter) and then share it with the group. Who knows, you might just break free. . . and write a BOOK!
• Cut the umbilical cord. Forget those troublesome chapters or story for a while. Begin something else. This works well for some writers. You can dig up that old story later, and deal with it when your Muse is more friendly.
• Could it be you received those depressing rejections because you didn’t research the publishers well enough? Duh! Well then, go to JacketFlap.com, or Amazon’s dedicated research page, and plunge in. Nothing kills the Procrastination Virus faster than an acceptance!
• Back up your work-output daily. It also applies to anything that if lost, would cause you instant gray hairs, great embarrassment, or huge legal problems. This means storage outside of your computer: a free online storage space, floppy disks, zip drive, or burning info onto a CD. Forget at your peril!
• Ask yourself this: When was the last time an editor knocked on my front door and begged to read my manuscript? The choice is yours. Either quit writing, or type up that query letter and RUN, don’t walk, to the post office.
  

Words to Write By

Do it now, mate. Your Golden Writing Hour is nigh.

HAPPY WRITING MATES!

Margot Finke's biography and index to Musings.