I’ve been delaying writing this for some time.
Because that’s what we do. If a writer has a period of spare time, you can bet that they’ll get round to writing only after they’ve colour-coded their blu-ray collection, cleaned out the washing machine detergent tray and checked TikTok a hundred times. It’s work, and work can be a chore at times. But most successful writers learnt early on that routine is important: set times; word counts; bribes. (I read somewhere that Ian McEwan rewards himself at the end of a morning session with a solitary biscuit - I guess he doesn’t have a particularly sweet tooth.) You can put the job off all you like, but stories don’t write themselves. Bestsellers won’t bestsell unless the procrastination problem is tackled.
The good news is, it’s not necessarily a problem. Eventually, writers get so annoyed with themselves, and the deadline - or guilt - becomes so intense, that they hammer the work out anyway. The fear of failing, of having a blank page in front of them, ultimately outweighs the fear of writing. It’s how we all got our homework done, isn’t it? Every Sunday night at the dining room table ignoring your mum saying, ‘I told you not to put it off until the last minute. Bet you wish you’d got it out the way earlier now, don’t you?’
And it often transpires that the writing is actually far more fun than what you did while you were putting off the task. Yes, writing can be psychologically bruising and lonely but, really, how exciting is cleaning that detergent tray?
However, sometimes procrastination is simply exhaustion wearing laziness’s clothing.
I’m beating myself up at the moment for letting other things get in my way over the last week. I was going great guns earlier in the summer and achieving my goal of 3000 words a day. I managed that for a fortnight straight, but it became unsustainable in the end. The little voice asks you, ‘What’s the point?’ The view out the window calls. On my deathbed I’m probably not going to regret procrastination, but I will regret not spending enough time with my children.
I burnt myself out. But we’re all burnt out right now. The last two years have been difficult for everyone. It’s a societal malaise, not a writerly one. We’re all overworked. Overwhelmed. Over it. We’re sick of hearing about what fresh hell is going on in the world. Of the iniquities and immoralities inherent in our late-Capitalist system. Of the rising costs of literally everything.
So I get it. Life is meaningless and a slog and the cards are stacked against you. But the thing is: you want to write. So why are you procrastinating? Are you scared of writing rubbish? Are you waiting for that false friend called ‘inspiration’?
Or do you just need to put down your damn phone?
Distractions abound. There’s a seagull that thinks it owns our back balcony and always waits until I’m writing before it starts pecking on the kitchen window. It’s like it knows. If you work twelve hours a day, as a lot of humanity seems to at the moment, then this sort of minor intrusion feels deadly. Everyone has a peak time for work, and you’ll definitely succumb to procrastination if you try and squeeze work out when you’re half asleep. Just get something down. Five minutes is enough. One hundred words.
The point is, you’re not alone.
Truman Capote is one of our most famous of all literary procrastinators, although this is probably ascribed to the fact that he once claimed to write in bed. In fact, he didn’t publish another novel after In Cold Blood. (I’ve touched on writer’s block before and it may be that’s what he had, or he felt he couldn’t live up to his previous success. The evidence is that, in the two decades leading up to his death, he aborted several projects.)
These days, we all look to George RR Martin as the paragon of procrastination. The author published A Games of Thrones in 1996. Two years later, A Clash of Kings landed. Two years after that, we got A Storm of Swords. Big, big books. Exciting, violent page-turners. Published roughly twenty-four months apart. A Feast for Crows followed in 2005 and A Dance with Dragons saw release in 2011. And then… Nothing. Two more books are still due and he’s been writing the sixth for eleven years. What’s crippled him? Is he trying to write an alternative ending to the one we were presented by the HBO series? I expect - and hope - so. Has he got lost amongst the myriad locations, characters and backstories of Westeros? Probably. Have his procrastinations (writing other books in the meantime, helping to script the TV series, public appearances) been unavoidable or has his stomach for the original series - one he started writing almost thirty years ago - simply left him? The man’s 74 next month and book six is nowhere in sight, let alone the seventh. Fans are worried.
Procrastination. Every writer does it, and every writer has to learn how to conquer it. But it's normal, and it's understandable.
I have to go. The ghost of Chekhov is back at my kitchen window.
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