Overcoming the Urge to Procrastinate Doing Your Writing

episode 1

overcoming the urge to procrastinate doing your writing

Sue Campbell

Starting a podcast has been on my to-do list for awhile.

I love writing podcasts, and have a shortlist of those I follow almost religiously. But when I thought about adding my voice to the pile, I wanted to make sure I was helping writers get down to business, not further distract themselves.

And I wanted it to align with the Pages & Platform mission to think holistically about what it takes to be an author. These days, you can't just write. The job of building an audience falls to you as well.

This podcast will be short, to the point, and help you develop the mindset it takes to sit down, do the work, and then do even more work to build an audience. And do it all without making yourself crazy and burning out.

The first episode addresses writing in the time of COVID. Is it okay to be writing right now? Is it okay to NOT be writing right now? If you want to be writing and you're not, how can you move from the couch to the writing chair?

I made this eleven minutes of audio to help you tackle Resistance if you're almost ready to write.

Times being what they are, it can be tough to get your writing done. The first question to ask, whether you're writing or you're not is this: Do I like my reasons? If you're not writing, and you don't like your reasons, I offer a tip for overcoming the urge to procrastinate your writing.

TRANSCRIPT:

Hey writers, you're listening to the Pages and Platforms podcast with book marketing and mindset coach Sue Campbell.

Hey writers, I hope you're all safe and well right now. I'm recording this in April of 2020 during the midst of the global pandemic. Super fun and interesting times. I truly do hope you are all safe and well. We've got a little Maslow hierarchy of needs going on right now. So for some of us, our creative work has been put aside while we meet our basic needs and I totally understand that. In fact, I've been seeing a lot of posts on Twitter and in other places reminding writers to be gentle on themselves and that it's okay to not be creating right now. And I totally agree that that can be the case, but it doesn't mean it has to be. So I would also like to give you permission to be creative and do your work right now as well. There's no right or wrong answer.

So the other side of the you don't have to be creating right now coin is you certainly can be creating right now if you're feeling up to it and motivated. And I know many writers who are doing that. In fact, I just had a conversation, um, with a writing friend of mine and he was saying at the beginning of the pandemic, he wasn't writing because he was seeing that message so much. He almost felt like it wasn't okay to be writing right now. And then something really took over and he got on the streak and he's been writing every day since March 30th. And that is absolutely fantastic. And I said, you know what I think we should actually be asking ourselves is whether we're writing or we're not writing, do we like our reasons? So if you're not writing right now, and your reason is because you made a conscious choice to care for your family or attend to something directly related to the pandemic and the impact it's had on your life, you probably like your reason.

It's something that you're comfortable with and you do not need to beat yourself up for not getting your writing done. If you're not getting your writing done and all of your other needs are being met and you're just kind of vegging out, um, because you're just really letting resistance take over, then maybe you don't like your reason and maybe you should rethink it and see if you can get some work done. If you are getting writing done right now, that's nothing to feel guilty about. Just make sure that again, you like your reason for the choice that you've made and the actions that you're, I think that's the real key.

So for those of you who aren't writing right now, and perhaps you don't like your reasons, and do you wish you were writing, I would like to talk to you for a minute and give you some tools that may help you break through and get the words flowing. Again, writing is work. We have to sit down, we have to get our ass in the chair. We have to commit to doing the work even when inspiration isn't there. So really carving out the time, um, very deliberately on your calendar. Setting an alarm, making a routine is very, very important. So I know very well that that is easier said than done. Often what happens is we will set an intention, maybe we'll put it in our calendar. Um, the reminder to do the thing will come up and we will say, wow, I don't know what I was thinking when I plan that, that is not at all what I want to do right now.

And we will let ourselves get re-routed and maybe go read a book or scroll on Instagram or watch Netflix or bake bread. Everyone's baking a lot of bread right now. Um, my advice to you when you hit a decision point where you can stay true to what you decided you were going to do or you can reroute yourself to something that is easier is to remember that you are both a tantruming toddler and a loving parent, right? There are two parts of your brain at play here. The tantruming toddler part is the part that says, no, I don't want to do that right now. And is throwing a little fit and trying to get its own way to do something else. That's the limbic system of your brain, the primitive part of your brain. I'm trying to run away from something that might seem scary and that you don't want to do.

And the loving parent part of your brain is your prefrontal cortex that's responsible for planning, for executive functioning, for strategy. Um, and for, you know, being a adult loving parent and that part of your brain when the tantrum is happening, needs to not try to push the tantrum away, not try to squash it. Right? We're not going to white knuckle our way to productivity, at least not for very long. The key is to allow the tantrum to happen without changing what we set out to do what we said we were going to do yours and make space for that tantrum and say, Oh yeah, I totally get it. I understand why you don't want to sit down and do your writing right now. I really, I totally understand. I feel you. So get it all out. Have that little tantrum and then we will just sit down and get down to work.

Yeah.

Really it's about dealing with urges. How do we deal with the urge to procrastinate, to ignore something that we is really important to us, but it's also very difficult and we don't want to do, how do we deal with that urge? Um, and one of the tools I learned from a life coach who I really respect and follow named Brooke Castillo is this concept of something called an urge jar. So it's very simple. You get a jar, any jar will do and you get a set of, um, beads or marbles or dragon tears, um, and you keep them nearby. And then every time you experience the urge and you allow the urge, but without giving into the urge and you know, these things last 10 minutes, 10 minutes is the standard length of an urge. Maybe 15 minutes of things are really bad. Um, when you process that and just let yourself experience it, but then you go ahead and do whatever you were going to do anyway, what you set out to do, then you get to drop a little beat in the jar and we experienced a lot of urges in a day or in a week.

And so pretty quickly you can start to see this jar filling with beads and every beat is a symbol of a time where you committed to your higher self instead of giving into your toddler self. And your limbic system actually loves this. Your limbic system loves to do things accumulate, right? It becomes like a game. And so you can use that to basically reroute yourself and keep yourself on track and have a visual reminder that you are capable of overcoming urges. So not only do you end up with, you know, a great word count or a bunch of chapters that are edited, but you also have a visual reminder on your desk right in front of you of your power to actually sit down and persist and do the work.

Having said all that, I'm happy to report progress on the personal productivity front. I have been working on the fifth draft of my young adult novel and I've written for about 10 out of the last 13 days. I'm pretty happy about that progress and hoping that this is my penultimate draft. Uh, my colleague and Holly and editor here at pages and platforms is working on finishing up her, um, short story or it's probably going to be more novella length. That was based on the work she did with Shawn Coyne last summer at the story grid master work experiment. I highly recommend you check out that podcast where Sean challenged and to write a short story based on Brokeback mountain, using it as a masterwork, dissecting it and then putting together a fresh story. It's a very exciting project and I'm so happy and excited to see how it's going to turn out.

Our other story grid certified editor, Rachelle Ramirez, has actually just celebrated the launch of the book action story, the primal genre, which was written by Shawn Coyne and edited by her. So that's very exciting project that's come to fruition. If you're writing an action story, something in the action genre, I highly recommend that you pick up the book because it's going to basically give you this beautiful tool kit of everything you need to successfully tell a really riveting action story in terms of things that we have cooking for writers at pages and platforms. We will be doing a series of calls, free calls for writers. I'll be doing one on April 23rd that's basically a writer pep-talk. So if you want to come on the call, it's free and you can let me know what's going on in your writing world right now, what your challenges are and I will try to help you overcome them. And then on April 30th we will be doing a live call with all three of us, myself, Sue Campbell, Anne Hawley, and Rachelle Ramirez, where you can sort of ask us anything related to writing, editing, and book marketing. So be sure to visit pages and platforms.com and get the details for all of those events.

Thanks for joining me. I encourage you to check out pages and platforms online as well. Pages and platforms.com when you subscribe to our newsletter, you can get access to all sorts of helpful resources for writers.