[writing life] Procrastination by way of work

I’m still pushing to the end on The Forgotten Woman and as I get closer to the end of my first novel in more than a decade, I am amazed at how much of a perfectionist I have become.

Constantly writing and rewriting inline when I should just let it go and keep pushing to the end.

I could say that I am only trying to make sure that the book is going to be the best it’s going to be, but the truth is that I am trying to procrastinate through work. Doing the work, but doing things like “in depth research”, spending 30 minutes trying to find the perfect word, trying to find that ship schematic to “block out the scene”.

All the things (even this blog post) that I use to keep me from finishing the word count, the scene, the book. So I can go past the deadline and try to convince myself to give up because “I can’t even keep the deadline”.

The cure to this is:

— knowing that this part is about throwing it all on the page. It doesn’t have to make sense, it doesn’t have to be coherrent, it doesn’t have to have good grammar, good spelling or any of that. At this stage, it just has to be a finished story.

— knowing that at this point, it’s about finishing. You’ve heard it before; you can edit a sucky manuscript, but you can’t edit one that doesn’t exist.

— coming to terms with the fact that this book will suck. Hard. And despite my best effort to craft it well in revisions, Lisa finely-tuned editing skills, and my vision for Allazar (honed by questions posed by Tracy as she does the art) there will still be a gap between what I want it to be and what is will be. In time, it will be as I envisioned, but now it’ll be what it will be.

Now I have a few more scenes to finish… until next time, May the Bright Light always shine on your Path!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *