How Delaying Your Writing Can Improve Your Creativity
Is your writing plagued by bouts of procrastination? Do you find yourself some days just inexplicably refusing to write even when you’re seated in front of your computer with your manuscript file open before you? All that procrastination can leave you feeling frustrated and guilty, convinced that you’re sabotaging your own creative process. Not only that, it will also keep you from overcoming writer’s block. Right? Maybe not. Not if it’s the kind of procrastination that actually helps you write better.
CONTENTS
How to Get in the Zone and Avoid Unhealthy Procrastination
What Is Procrastination?
According to Merriam-Webster, when you procrastinate, you intentionally and habitually put off doing something that you should be doing and get done at a set date.
Author and researcher Timothy Pychyl wants us to keep this in mind regarding procrastination: “All procrastination is delay, but not all delay is procrastination.” What distinguishes it from other forms of delay is an element of irrationality. An example of delay that is not necessarily procrastination is when you delay a scheduled family trip because of inclement weather. Or when you delay sitting down to write because your kid needs more help with a school project — that’s not procrastination.
What about delay that is procrastination? Psychology Today specifies that procrastination involves something planned or a task that should have been done earlier, but is delayed anyway. Therefore, when you procrastinate doing something, you actually expect to be worse off for failing to get it done on time — and still you put off doing it. That there is your element of irrationality. Then this scenario is repeated with each writing project or book that needs to be written, ticking off the intentionality and habituality boxes.
Why Do Writers Procrastinate?
Writers have a reputation as being some of the worst procrastinators. We read about authors who took years and years to finish writing a book because they simply couldn’t stick to a timeline, and instead of writing, they go off to do totally unrelated things. For example, Brian Phillips, journalist and author of Impossible Owls, confessed to once moving to Paris “so I could justify taking longer with an essay because ‘I’m working on it in Paris.’” Others are less extreme, limiting themselves to bursts of activities like cleaning and reorganizing their desk drawers just as they are about to sit down to write. Either way, many writers just can’t seem to help themselves.
Why?
The biggest reasons behind writers procrastinating are fear and insecurity, lack of inspiration, and the emotional and psychological toll that writing takes on them.
Fear
Given that writing a book is such a huge undertaking, it makes sense that fear would be a major obstacle for writers. Imposter syndrome — the crippling belief that one is, in fact, not good enough to be writing a book — plagues far more writers than we can count. Imposter syndrome results in the much-dreaded writer’s block, or, in the worst-case scenario, books that never get written.
Lack of inspiration/motivation
Writing can be impossibly challenging — both from the technical and emotional perspective. Without inspiration and motivation, especially self-motivation, it can be a near- or downright-insurmountable mountain to climb.
Emotional and psychological toll
The technical aspect of writing alone can bruise and batter you emotionally and psychologically, and physically too (carpal tunnel syndrome and back pains anyone?). Throw in a dark/disturbing, painful, or alarming and aggravating subject matter and you have the makings of conditions like emotional exhaustion, mental exhaustion, burnout, or worse.
The Link between Procrastination and the Writer’s Creative Process
How Procrastination Helps Improve Your Creativity
Here’s the thing: Putting things off can actually make things better, especially when it comes to creativity. Writing is one creative pursuit that benefits from this rather unconventional approach. But your success will depend on what you’re procrastinating on and how you’re procrastinating on it. When you’re clear on these two factors, then delaying your writing can yield the rewards that it’s supposed to.
Here are the main points to keep in mind regarding procrastination and its positive influence on creativity for writers:
1. Strategic procrastination allows for thoroughness, creativity, and pivotal changes.
Organizational psychologist Adam Grant said in a 2016 TED Talk that there is a sweet spot right between accomplishing a task as soon as possible and putting it off until the very last minute. That pocket of time is where you can explore multiple ideas, especially those that are seemingly unrelated. It’s called strategic procrastination, also known as purposeful procrastination.
Let’s use the analogy of marination: We marinate meat, poultry, fish, and seafood, thus delaying the cooking process. Often, the longer you marinate a piece of meat, the juicier and tastier it is — provided, of course, that your marinade is great and the meat is fresh. Remember: what you procrastinate on and how you procrastinate.
Taking a longer time to finish writing your book can result in a sustained creative flow, innovation, and inspired problem-solving. It also enables you to make the smartest choices regarding your book, be it a character arc, how to best illustrate your points, or whether or not to let two characters end up together. Just keep in mind that strategic procrastination requires that you take note of all the seemingly random ideas and observations that come to you while you’re not actively writing your book.
2. Incubation allow ideas to fully develop and complexities to be explored.
Incubation, as far as writing goes, is the process of warming an idea. It can take as long as years, depending on the material. For example, many authors could be working on a book while incubating another book, for years.
Incubation is crucial in any writer’s creative process, and sadly, it is overlooked by some writers and those involved in the production of their book who either simply lack an understanding of its importance or choose to ignore it in favor of other motivations. Incubation, in fact, can spell the difference between a good book and a truly inspired, life-changing masterpiece.
During the incubation period for a book, do the following:
Let things percolate.
This means mulling ideas, themes, a main problem around which your book revolves, a specific character and their personality (in fact, it may not be a character in your book yet but the person who inspires a certain character that you’re about to create).
When you allow for an incubation period in your writing, your mind is able to perceive and pursue the complexities in your themes and ideas and work them out in your book, or you can allow your readers to work them out for themselves without being influenced by you. You are also able to explore possibilities in narrative structure, characters’ actions, your solutions to the problems that you outline in your book, and so on.
Here’s a trick you can try: Choose a particular scene or argument that you want to put in your book and think it over right around your bedtime. In essence, you are mentally writing that scene or making that argument, and as you are transported into the dream world, you may just subconsciously continue to explore it.
Read both relevant and unrelated literature.
You can never go wrong with reading if you want inspiration, knowledge, and motivation. Depending on your genre, you can read up on your subject matter, including articles, correspondence, even social media threads.
Watch movies and videos.
This is a multisensory way to get a sense of the kind of world you wish to create or simply to learn more about your topic.
Conversations with sources and sounding boards.
As soon as you know what you’re going to write about, you can talk to people who would be your source of crucial information and insight. You can also brainstorm your book with someone you trust.
Pursue a hobby or learn to do something that’s related to your book.
What you learn from actually doing something that features prominently in your book — for example, baking or coding — can give you details, sensations, and insights that you will otherwise not get to experience from simply reading or watching videos about these activities. Actually doing allows you to enrich your narrative with both major and minor but pertinent details that help in creating atmosphere, adding layers to a character, or injecting a bit of humor in an otherwise somber exposition.
3. The flow state is facilitated by strategic procrastination and incubation.
“In the zone,” “in the groove,” and “losing track of time” are expressions that rightly apply to creative endeavors. It refers to a state that writers and other artists have to get into to be productive and creative. In his book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi describes the burst of creative flow as “a state of concentration or complete absorption with the activity at hand and the situation.”
When you’re in the zone, or in a flow state, brilliance is possible — maybe even guaranteed. Full immersion comes with clarity and inspiration, and everything just seems to fall into place. But how long can you stay in a flow state? The answer is not all the time. Our mind works within a flow state for around ninety minutes to two hours, after which it’s wise to take a break to give the brain some much-needed rest.
The principle of alternating focused periods with brief rest periods is the same principle behind the Pomodoro technique, the time management method based on twenty-five-minute stretches of focused work broken up by five-minute breaks, with longer breaks of typically fifteen to thirty minutes taken after four consecutive work intervals.
The question now is, how do you get into a flow state instead of getting distracted and endlessly procrastinating?
How to Get in the Zone and Avoid Unhealthy Procrastination
Both strategic procrastination and incubation prime your mind for intense periods of focused writing. But how else can you get in the zone and avoid needlessly sabotaging your creative process?
Here are 12 things you can do — should do — to ensure consistent in-the-zone writing, creativity, and productivity:
1. Create a physical and virtual workspace that’s conducive for your writing.
First things first: Give yourself a space where you can work in comfort and maximum concentration. Keep your desk free of clutter, preferably having only your computer and a few items that you need to keep within arm’s reach. Everything else should go in the desk drawers and in the shelves.
As for your virtual workspace, be sure to keep your files organized. Create folders and make sure your files go in their designated folders. For easy access, create shortcuts and put them in a Shortcuts folder pasted on your desktop screen.
2. Know what stops you and what keeps you going as a writer.
What part of writing bores you? What part of it intimidates you every time you sit down to write? Be aware of the things most likely to keep you from getting into a flow state. On the other hand, what part of writing do you enjoy the most? Is there anything in particular about sitting down and writing that helps get you going? You can definitely factor in weird little things, like how the sound of your fingers tapping on the keys helps ease you into the zone. Being aware of these things and responding to them accordingly is crucial to how quickly and easily you can start writing and how effectively you can stay in the zone.
3. Set clear goals.
Knowing exactly what you’re supposed to achieve will get you in the right frame of mind much more easily. Give yourself a goal for each day that you sit down to write. If you’re working for most of the day, then give yourself individual goals for each stretch of time that you work without interruption.
4. Determine your most productive time and take advantage of it.
Needless to say, during this time, you should be free of distractions. This means no phone calls, texts, emails, etc. Flag important emails and turn off your phone and the notification sounds on your computer.
If you can’t have the luxury of a consistent daily writing schedule (say, your day job takes you on the road for most of the day), the next best thing to do is block off one or two twenty-five- to thirty-minute stretches during the day so you can write in peace. Then you can add two to three hours of writing later at night — or maybe more if you live alone or you’re not working two jobs.
5. Break up a task into smaller parts.
Writing a book certainly benefits from this approach. For example, your entire project could be broken down into the following tasks: outlining the chapters, research (if needed), and writing each chapter. However, inspiration can strike for a later chapter while when you’re still currently up to chapter 3, so it’s perfectly fine to deviate.
6. Create a timeline and set a consistent writing schedule.
Now that your big writing project has been broken down into bite-size tasks, set a deadline for each task and create a consistent writing schedule. A timeline and a consistent writing schedule should help keep you in check and help you build momentum. However, don’t be too hard on yourself. In fact, be sure to allow yourself to have a day off, as well as an off day now and then. Sometimes taking an unscheduled break is exactly what you need to find inspiration.
7. Challenge yourself.
Setting challenges for yourself will raise your level of engagement. For example, let’s say you’re applying the Pomodoro technique to your writing: You can challenge yourself to write three pages within every twenty-five-minute period, especially if you’re writing your first draft.
8. Establish self-care routines.
Back up your established writing schedule with established self-care routines. Since being in the zone involves tuning out and forgetting everything else but the writing that you’re doing, it’s possible that you end up working longer that your set block of time, and then you’re likely to overlook or ignore mealtimes, or that pang of hunger that signals it may be time to take a break and get some snacks and something to drink — or, if you’re running on coffee or tea, that it may be time to drink some water. Or you may put off a visit to the bathroom or a shower. Self-care routines help ensure your comfort and well-being, both of which are crucial to your work.
9. Practice and establish routines that get you into the zone.
Understand that practice and routines are help get you into a flow state. Routines like visiting an online dictionary and reading three random entries or simply putting on background music or ambient sound can influence your ability to get into the task at hand and concentrate. On days when you don’t particularly feel like writing, write anyway. Just start by going through the motions. Consider it practice for when inspirations strikes. You never know: Those three pages of unremarkable text that you have written today could actually contain the sparks of brilliance that you won’t see until days later, or even not until revision. It’s true what they say that practice makes perfect. Or perhaps in the case of writing, practice makes brilliant. Or practice makes a masterpiece. Forget perfect.
10. Be accountable.
As a self-published author, you won’t have an agent to check in on you and motivate you, especially when you’re trying to get past writer’s block. But you can ask someone you trust to keep you on track, or as close to on track as possible. Remember, be firm with yourself, but don’t let a deadline keep you from writing a better book, thanks to a more generous time frame.
11. Factor in the break you will need between first draft and the first revision.
Procrastinate, but remember that once you have finished writing your first draft, it would be wise to leave it untouched for about six weeks before beginning the revision process.
12. Reward yourself.
Don’t forget to reward yourself each time you finish one more task on your timeline, or simply when you have had a really good day of writing and you’ve accomplished more than expected. Remember, you are your own manager and HR, so you will have to design the rewards program yourself. Just a tip, though: Reserve the more significant reward for after you’ve typed the last bit of punctuation on your final revision file.
The Takeaway
Every writer needs to understand the relationship between creativity and time and meaningful engagement with the work that needs to be done. To be truly creative and productive, rethink your attitude toward procrastination and approach it with a healthy set of habits and routines and a healthy dose of discipline.
