Sure Fire Ways to Procrastinate

by Kendra Leigh Speedling

Writers write every day, they say. It makes sense; the thing that separates writers from People Who Have Ideas is actually writing, and it's easier to keep at it when it's part of a routine. Writing every day not only helps you improve the writing itself, but means that you finish things. It's the advice that comes up in every book, blog, or interview about writing. Write every day.

I would like to extol the virtues of writing every day, but since the most I've done this week is open a Word document before launching myself away from my computer with a wail akin to that of an injured baby manatee,* that would make me a hypocrite.

The usual excuses apply—day job, other obligations, frustration with everything I'm attempting to work on at the moment—but writers work past these things, I've been told. Writers power through scenes even when they feel like they'd get a better result letting the cat walk over the keyboard.

In this particular climate, write every day starts to feel less like advice and more like a rebuke. Where's your discipline? the malicious brain imps will whisper. Don't you know that real writers write every day? The subsequent spiral of guilt and recriminations generally culminates in a realization that I've spent the last three hours alphabetizing my bookshelves so I don't have to acknowledge the fact that I have a manuscript I haven't touched in two weeks.** It eventually evens out again, but I could do without the 3-4 day period where I feel like I'm the laziest person in the entire universe. I used to keep a spreadsheet to enter my word count for each day, but had to stop when each 0 started feeling like a reflection of my worth as a person.

So absolutely, make time for your writing. Try to write every day, or as often as you can. Enjoy those days when it's easy; sit down to write even when it feels your plotline and your life are having a contest to see who can collapse into a gooey mess first. If you really, really can't bear to look at your manuscript on a particular day, write something else: something short, something silly, something about your world, something you don't intend to ever see print. But if you, like me, find yourself sacrificing your sanity for the sake of a word count, don't beat yourself up if a few days pass without anything resembling productivity. You've had a break, and now you can get back to writing.

In the end, it doesn't matter if you write 2000 words a day or 100, write every day, every other, on weekends, in the mornings or evenings or under the light of a full moon. What matters is that you write, and keep writing, and remember why you wanted to write things in the first place.

*I don't actually know if manatees wail, so this may be horridly inaccurate. If you have identified it as such, you clearly know far more about zoology than I do, and can feel free to imagine the animal of your choice.

**The fact that there is an entire website dedicated to the concept of cat vacuuming assures me that I'm not entirely alone in this regard.

Kendra Leigh Speedling's short story "They Shall Know Us At the End" appears in the July issue of Penumbra. She graduated from the University of Minnesota with a major in English and a minor in Asian Languages and Literatures. She is a 2011 Dell Awards finalist, and will someday master the art of productivity.