Do The Work: Dealing with Procrastination
By Barbara O'Neal | January 28, 2025 |
Let’s talk about procrastination. That is, in case you haven’t named it, what you’re doing when you bake cupcakes, or work on that hobby, or clean all the baseboards, or doom scroll for hours instead of writing.
There are always reasons, large and small, not to work. My mid-back has been bugging me a lot. I’m worried about my mom, who doesn’t worry enough about herself. I have three cats who are all fifteen years old. Fifteen years old, people!
And you know…waves hands…the world. The terrors.
Yes. All those things. All the things distracting you, too.
But I’m here to tell you it’s time to get back to work.
First of all, it’s never about just procrastination. Something is always beneath it, something keeping you stuck, avoiding the page, avoiding even the place where you ordinarily write. What gets in the way of writing for you? Serious question. Think about this. What, exactly, is getting in your way?
The reasons for procrastinating are not all massive, big problems and thoughts. Often, they’re small things cluttering up the writing space like keys and mail on that one counter in the kitchen. Here are the three main things that get in the way:
Fear (also maybe anger)
Distractions
Real Life
FEAR AND ANGER
The first, fear and anger, cover a lot of ground.
That the work won’t be good enough
That you’ll reveal too much about yourself
That it won’t be as good as your last work
That your 8th grade teacher was right—you are a lousy writer
That the work is too serious
That the work is too frivolous
That the work is too “out there”
That the work is too bloody, too sexy, too violent, too quiet, about the wrong age of people, not very fashionable, too long, too short…fill in the blank
And then there are the other fears, about disappointing the people in your life, about worrying what will happen if you give so much time and attention to writing, taking it away from family, children, friends…and nothing ever comes of it. At the moment, a lot of us are fearful that there just not be any point.
There is a point. Trust me.
Anger is fear’s cousin, but it’s a lot more destructive, and people often avoid naming it because it feels shameful. Some things people get angry about are:
The unfairness of the publishing industrial complex
The fact that so and so got the deal you deserved and you are way better
You could write more if…..this one thing changed (you had a more supportive spouse, you could reduce your hours, you didn’t have a toddler…) Insert your own.
Are you angry? Is is getting in the way of your writing time?
If any of those fear or anger prompts resonate, I suggest you write them down. Naming a thing can rob it of a lot of power. If you are so inclined, journal about them or do some timed writings.
DISTRACTION
We live in a world that is more filled with distractions than it ever has been. We are addicted to our phones, texts, social media hits, emails, games, streaming, etc.
This is probably the most challenging aspect of writing in the modern world. Truly. It’s just human nature to want to get that dopamine hit—just go take a peek at …whatever. My personal bane of the moment is TikTok. There are so many fascinating points of view there, from all over the world. The vet in Riyad who rescues challenged cats; the guy who loves birds….so many. I also really like Messenger, because I get texts all day from writing friends. I love following research rabbit holes through the internet and beyond.
But all of those things can and do interfere with writing time if I don’t set clear boundaries.
REAL LIFE
The last thing that gets in our way is real life. Day jobs, kids, social obligations.
We all have to juggle real life, and of course we want to love and enjoy our lives as well as our work, but it can be a challenge to find the balance. Finding a balance here is one of the most challenging for me, and has been my entire career. I still struggle with it weekly, sometimes daily.
Some life obligations that get in the way of writing:
A nine to five job (or the like)
Kids of any ages who need you at certain times of day
A sick relative or other person who needs your time and attention
Friends and neighbors
Community obligations
Housework, meal prep, shopping (etc etc etc)
Clarissa Pinkola Estes says in Women Who Run With the Wolves, “I’ve seen women insist on cleaning everything in the house before they could sit down to write… and you know it’s a funny thing about housecleaning… it never comes to an end. Perfect way to stop a woman. A woman must be careful to not allow over-responsibility (or over-respectabilty) to steal her necessary creative rests, riffs, and raptures. She simply must put her foot down and say no to half of what she believes she “should” be doing. Art is not meant to be created in stolen moments only.”
Let me repeat that last bit: “She simply must put her foot down and say no to half of what she believes she “should” be doing. Art is not meant to be created in stolen moments only.”
The quote applies to housework, and to women, but I think it applies across the board, to all of us. Our relationships, our children, our day jobs all need and deserve the clearness of our full attention when we’re engaged with them, but so does our writing. By setting clear boundaries for each, we can give both our best—at the right time.
How to work anyway
1. Make time and space for the work. Create an appointment with yourself that you do not break. Tuesdays at 10, evenings five days a week right after dinner, early mornings before work Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Whatever works for you. You probably already know which times of day or night are best for you, when you can get in a couple of hours of really focused writing time.
Now, use it. Make it absolutely sacred. Nothing interferes—unless it’s an actual, bleeding emergency.
2. Prime the pump. Devote 10-20 minutes at the start of your work time to get into the flow. Some people light candles. Put on the music of the book. I like to meditate for ten minutes, and even when I think it’s dumb and it’s probably not helping, my bullet journal record says otherwise. It clears my demons. Another thing I like is to journal, or at least to spend a few minutes writing about what I think might be happening in the next scene or two.
3. Use an app like Freedom to turn off WiFi while you’re drafting. I also turn on Do Not Disturb on my phone.
4. Accountability Find a way to be accountable to your writing time. I keep track of the hours and words I write in a bullet journal. I write down the date, the project, the start and stop times and either the word count for the day, or the kind of revisions I did.
Maybe you like seeing a streak—a star on the calendar. Maybe you work best if you have to check in with a friend or a critique group. Any method of accountability will work, and it really does help.
Just as with any other habit—going to the gym or eating breakfast or practicing Korean, all the talk in the world won’t get anything done. You have to actually do the work.
Do your work. We all need it.
Have you been procrastinating or avoid the page? What are some of the things that get in your way? How can you set boundaries to give yourself more time? Are you strugging with something? Maybe someone here has a trick to help.
Barbara O’Neal is the author of more than a dozen award-winning, bestselling novels, including the runaway bestseller, When We Believed in Mermaids, which has been published in more than 20 countries and spent many months on the Amazon Charts, as well as the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and Washington Post bestseller lists. Barbara lives on the beach in rugged Oregon with her husband, a British endurance athlete who vows he’ll never lose his accent and their zoo of cats and dogs. You can find more information on her newsletter and where to find her on social media at barbaraoneal.com.
I find it so appropriate to find no comments on this very topic. Great list of reasons why I am stuck.
Barbara, this is an important post. And yes, my life has been full of excuses…moving across country, my brother now being seriously ill, this platform rejecting my posts…
But the pages are getting better. I actually went back and looked at some earlier versions and I am finding very good work. So we will see. In the meantime, I post a piece every week on my blog and review others work. There is no excuse for NOT WRITING. Take care, Beth
I’m glad to hear you’re finding good work! That is a lot–the move, the ill brother–and working anyway is a big win.
Hello Barbara, and thank you for a hard, necessary post. What you offer is a list, daunting in its completeness, of all the potential roadblocks facing writers. As you make clear, tech has made the list much longer.
But when I consider it all, the force at work to keep me from writing is something else. Call it loss of confidence, or generalized pessimism, etc., but what it comes down to is a question: This idea you have for a new novel, even if you do it justice, even if it succeeds on its own terms, who’s going to want to read such a story? Yes, that’s the job of the writer, to make whatever she/he takes up worth the reader’s time–I know that. But to be honest. What is the realistic, plausible audience for the story you have in mind? Why would readers be interested? If the answer is missing, there you are, just you and a roomful of crickets.
Thanks again for a post worth everyone’s time.
Barry, I think that form of procrastination is related to fear. Fear of rejection, fear of not finding an audience. But I don’t think any of us actually know who the audience for a particular work is, so you have to write anyway. Even if you are writing for yourself (a very authentic way to write), there are thousands of people like you. Who would have thought the viewpoint of an octopus would be such a hit (Remarkable Creatures)? The marketing angle is something to grapple with later, when you’ve written. I hope you’ll figure out a way to put up walls against those voices telling you that no one will want to read your book. They will.
Hi Barbara:
I’m actually procrastinating by writing this instead of turning to my manuscript, but …
Ahem.
One of the most brilliant things I’ve ever read on this subject was also by you. In an earlier post, you described your daily writing goal as your practice–like prayer, or meditation or tai chi. I found that enlightening–and incredibly useful. It elevated the act of writing into the realm of the spiritual, which put it beyond it being a mere task–or even a habit, as you describe it here, though obviously habit and practice share some important territory.
I’ve always found it useful, when I’m feeling resistant to the work, to simply say to myself, “Just begin. Do something, anything. Just get started.” That almost always gets the ball rolling, the juices flowing, the chi circulating (I’m running out of analogies). You know what I mean.
I hope the tai chi and qigong are continuing to help you in your work and your daily life. I’ve found them essential.
I’m so glad you found some help in that earlier practice. I do still practice tai chi and qi gong and find them continually, endlessly helpful.
Great reminders, Barbara. Thank you. Your list of reasons we procrastinate holds a few that definitely resonate, as does Barry’s suggested loss of confidence. I think we could also add just-plain-occasional-laziness to the list. Recently I encountered a quote from Jim Rohn that has given me that swift kick in the pants I needed: “Everyone must choose one of two pains: the pain of discipline or the pain of regret.”
Laziness is up there for me, too. And thanks for that quote.
What a great quote! Regret is far, far worse. No contest.
Barbara, your post comes at a perfect time as I return to my stories. After a very busy Dec with Christmas and my daughter’s wedding and all the time with the family, writing was the very last thing on my list, if at all. There were days, all I did was scribble a bit in my notebook. It’s been hard to get back into the routine of writing and I’ve been so discouraged these past couple of weeks due to illness. I couldn’t even read much. Sigh. Which is how I fill my well. I’m on the mend and wrote a couple of pages today and that made me feel so good. Sometimes I wonder if it’ll ever be published, this story of my heart, but I can’t let those thoughts take root. I have to do the work, make it the best story, then submit it. Thank you for helping me push fear out of the way.
There’s another cause of procrastination, called “task freeze”, when one is overwhelmed by the complexity, size and/or number of things to do.
Sound familiar? The answer of course is to write bird by bird, breaking a big task into smaller chunks, or even tiny ones. A novel doesn’t write in a week or even a month, NaNoWriMo notwithstanding.
Have faith in the long haul. It will get done.