Beat Procrastination in 2 Steps and Shine as a Writer

It took me years to learn what I’m sharing here

Truman Capote famously struggled to finish his masterpiece In Cold Blood. He said of the book, “when I was even halfway through the book, when I had been working on it for a year and a half, I didn’t honestly know whether I would go on with it or not, whether it would finally evolve itself into something that would be worth all that effort. Because it was a tremendous effort.” (Public domian. source: Wikipedia)

Writing is hard. Especially for me. I’m not a natural writer, but I put a lot of effort in over the years to be good enough. I’m often asked how I manage to do a full-time job and write so many articles.

My short answer is getting up early, though I know that’s unhelpful. Anybody can get up early. They just don’t want to get up early to sit staring at a blank page for an hour or two.

What people really want to know is this: how do I not procrastinate when faced with a task that doesn’t come naturally to me. How do I actually write?

After leaving college I thought I could never write anything without a deadline. But one day I saw a TV segment of a politician blogging whilst travelling on a train. Writing… on a train.

A light blinked on in my head. It occurred to me that anybody can start a blog and just write and they can do it anywhere. So I did too: I just created a blog and wrote and, over time, I got better and better.

But I learned the hard way: lots of procrastinating. I’d either stare at the empty page or actively find “distractions” to pull me away from writing. Then, when I needed to get on with the day, the inevitable feeling of…