Procrastination - 5 Common Pitfalls and How to Deal With Them - Writing Habits Series

You set a goal to write for 20 minutes or half and hour or one or two hours. Your allotted time comes around to write.

But instead of sitting down and excitedly engaging with your work in progress, you start scrolling Instagram, watching a Youtube video, engaging in your favorite writers community and talking about all the things you love about writing....maybe even do a load of laundry.

And before you know it, you are waving goodbye to that precious time in your busy life, telling yourself, "I'll do it tomorrow."

Sound familiar?

It's a vicious cycle. Because the more you procrastinate, the longer you go without writing. And the longer you go without writing, the harder it is to get back to it, and you increase that likelihood of giving up on writing altogether!

Or you become like me, 10 years later, wishing I would've taken this miserable habit by the ears and controlled it.

So why do we procrastinate? Laziness? Maybe. But looking deeper, I've discovered that it is often way more than that.

In order to get a grip, and deal with your procrastination, you need to identify what it is that is holding you back.

When you first began writing this story, I'll bet you were on fire. You were so excited to have thought of something fresh, thrilling, passionate, and emotional. You believed you could jump on that computer and type and type and type, releasing that beautiful story you see in your mind.

But a few weeks in, something happened. You're drive has slowly died, and now you look at your computer with reluctance, not wanting to face the written page again.

Why?

I bet I can identify a few of those pitfalls for you:

1. It's not what you imagined your story to be. What you saw in your mind, isn't what is coming out on paper.

2. You are editing as you go. You have wrote and re-wrote sections and changed ideas so many times you are beginning to feel discouraged and confused.

3. You have come to a part in your story that you can't see clearly and don't know how to write through it to the next scene.

4. You are bored of your story, and you worry that if it's boring to you, it will be boring to others.

5. You have entered a busy season in your life, or maybe your mind is distracted elsewhere.

I personally have experienced ALL of these at one point or another. And as time went on I learned to identify the problem, and get it out of my way. Let's deal with one at a time and see if we can help you get you over this hump of procrastination.

It's not what you imagined your story to be. What you saw in your mind, isn't what is coming out on paper.

Let me just start by saying, that EVERY writer deals with this!

Rarely does any piece of art, come out exactly how you envisioned it at first.

Ever heard of a rough sketch either in painting or drawing? Artists will often create a rough drawing of a landscape, object, or person before they begin filling in with details such as color, shadow, light, texture, etc.

Imagine if they stopped at that rough sketch because it just wasn't what they imagined it to be.

Writer, that is what you're first draft is! A rough sketch of what you see in your mind. You need to get it down on paper so you can begin to see where to begin filling in those important details.

Which brings me to the next procrastination pitfall:

You are editing as you go. You have wrote and re-wrote sections and changed ideas so many times you are beginning to feel discouraged and confused.

Back to the painters analogy, you can't start filling in the details until the rough sketch is complete. The overall composition and placement needs to be right before you can beautify the piece.

Writing is exactly the same way. If you are editing your work as you write, you are jumping ahead of the process. You haven't even laid the whole groundwork yet.

My advice, along with so many authors, is DO NOT EDIT your work as you write. Put aside perfection. Write like mad! Don't look back. This is a rough sketch. No, it is not going to be perfect. But it is going to lay the base for all the beautiful changes and additions you will create afterwards.

Ok, but some of you may be wondering - What exactly does a "sketch" look like in writing?

If you are asking this, it probably means you are dealing with the next pitfall too:

You have come to a part in your story that you can't see clearly, and don't know how to write through it to the next scene.

This would indicate to me that you are uncertain about how to make a "sketch."

This is what stumped me for too long. I knew how I wanted my story to begin, some exciting points in the middle, and the ending. But all the in-betweens would stump me. I didn't know how to connect the dots without losing the interest of my readers. I wanted to create a page turning novel but felt lost on how to do so.

When I finally turned to research and went back to the foundations of story writing, I discovered something that totally propelled me forward!

Story Structure.

Story Structure IS your "sketch." The very foundations of what makes a good story.

Just like there are "rules" or "techniques" in art on how to compose something realistically and properly, so it is with writing!

Explaining Story Structure would be a whole blog post in and of itself. So before I send you off to learn about Story Structure, it's important to identify who you are:

Are you a Plotter? Or a Pantser?

Plotter's are writers who like to know every detail of their story before writing it. They'll often have outlines big enough to be a book itself. They know the beginning, every scene in-between, and the ending. Their "sketches" are clear and often detailed.

Chances are if you are a plotter, you've already discovered some form of Story Structure.

But Pantsers don't like to stick to outlines. They prefer to write as the ideas come to them. The story could take any direction and surprise and delight them.

But to be a successful Pantser, you still have to have a "sketch" - an underlying Story Structure. Often, a Pantser's sketch is just super simple and basic, giving them the liberty to create something unique and inspiring. Many don't have a written outline. Their sketch is just sitting in their subconscious. They instinctually know what drives a good story. And their books are new, unexpected, exciting, and satisfying.

But the foundation is still there. The sketch. The Story Structure.

So...are you a Plotter or a Pantser?

Before I discovered Story Structure, I would consider myself to have been an unsuccessful Panster. I had no foundational "sketch". No "structure" to follow. It made all the difference in connecting those dots, and I now have a clear path forward.

I don't claim to be a total Plotter or Pantser. I am somewhere in the middle. I have enough of a roadmap through plotting to guide me forward, but enough freedom as a Pantser to change things up as well.

Often artists will have to adjust their sketch to make sure it's composition is right. Everyone should have the freedom to adjust things as they go.

If you struggle with the overall basics of creating a compelling story, I suggest you look into Story Structure. Even if you like winging it like a Pantser, you could benefit from learning the basics at least mentally. Study your favorite stories to identify their structures.

One of my favorite explanations of Story Structure comes from Abbie Emmons on Youtube. Click the link if you are ready to dive in and learn all about it.

Ok on to the next procrastination pitfall:

You are bored of your story, and you worry that if it's boring to you, it will be boring to others.

This might be more of a Plotter's problem, but anyone really can suffer from this. And there are a few reasons for it:

You have been working with this book for so long that it's beginning to feel old to you. You are too close to it.

There are a few things you can do about this.

1. Get inspired again. Create a story board on Pinterest with images that remind and inspire you of your story. Create playlists to listen to that evoke the mood of the book. That bring back the reason you wanted to write it in the first place.

2. Take a break. Allow yourself time away, and WRITE ANOTHER STORY. As long as you are writing, you are making progress, whether it is this story or another. BUT! DO NOT throw it away. Set a goal, and come back to it, whether that be in a month, 6 months, or a year. 9 times out of 10, this is will solve your boredom and bring you new ideas and inspiration.

3. If you are a Plotter, put yourself into some Pantser shoes for a while and just write rabbit trails and plots for fun. Let it be wild, crazy, absurd ideas. Have fun. See what comes of it. You may find some different ideas to freshen up your story.

4. Allow a close friend or confidant to read a portion. Sometimes fresh eyes on your story might be just what you need to give you a boost in confidence.

The whole point with these tips is to help make this story come alive to you again. Remember why you wanted to write it in the first place.

And the last point. And this one, while probably not intentional, often causes procrastination.

You have entered a busy season in your life, or maybe your mind is distracted elsewhere.

Dear writer, this is life. Sometimes things happen that either physically or mentally pull you away from your beloved project.

And sometimes, you must let them.

As a wife, and mother, I will not let my writing pull me away from my relationship, and responsibility with my husband and children. They take priority over my writing. And sometimes, our season of life gets so busy, I can't get to writing.

But those crazy seasons never last. The point is to be intentional. SET ASIDE that time in your schedule to write where it works. Even if it is only 20 minutes in the evening before bed.

Or maybe, you can't focus on writing with everything else that is going on.

That's ok.

Take a break. It doesn't matter how long - a week, 3 weeks, 2 months, all summer. Whatever. Just set a goal to come back to it, and stick to it.

Don't give up.

I hope this post enlightened and encouraged you. Can you relate to some of these common procrastination issues? What are some other common pitfalls you deal with when it comes to writing? We would love to help you if we can. Let us know in the comments! Or send us a message! If you want to hear more from us, be sure to subscribe to our email list!