YWU Podcast Episode #48
4 Ways to Stop Dreading Writing
Hi writers. I hope your semester is off to a good start and you’re not getting overwhelmed just yet.
So let me start off by asking you a direct question: do you dread writing?
Does it feel like pulling teeth to get yourself to work on your book or an important article?
Do you find yourself doing just about anything else to avoid writing?
Are you spending ridiculous amounts of time cleaning your floor, alphabetizing your books, or reading endless amounts of research that’s only tangentially related to your topic?
Let’s be honest, even listening to this podcast can count as procrastination if you’re doing it to avoid actually writing!
Well, let me just say that you’re not alone.
Internal resistance to writing is something that nearly every author feels at some point.
It’s not a problem in and of itself.
Where it gets to be a problem is when you realize months have gone by and you haven’t made any progress on your work.
Writing a book is hard enough without fighting against yourself and trying to force yourself to do something you’d rather not do.
So today, I want to give you 4 different strategies to help you stop dreading writing, or at the very least, to bring down your resistance so you can start moving things forward.
You can find the full transcript of this episode at YourWordsUnleashed.com/48.
4 Strategies for Overcoming Writing Resistance
So, many of the authors I work with say that sitting down to write is like going into battle.
Before they can even get to work, they need to overcome their own self-doubts and anxieties about their ideas and their productivity.
I’ve found that those who resist writing the most tend to fall into one of two overlapping categories: perfectionists and folks who are experiencing impostor syndrome.
As a recovering perfectionist myself and someone who suffered from impostor syndrome for most of my academic career, I can completely relate.
Academics often strive for flawless work, creating immense pressure to produce something impeccable from the get-go.
It's like trying to hit a home run with every sentence, and that can be paralyzing.
#1) So that’s why my first strategy is to employ the 85% rule.
This is something I talked about at length in podcast episode #44, “Why (and How) to Do Less.”
Basically, it’s about taking the pressure off of yourself to do anything, including writing, at 100% effort or to 100% quality.
This is because when you’re trying to perform at 100%, then anything else counts as failure.
It sounds sort of ridiculous when you say it out loud, especially because we know that standards are subjective.
But sometimes it’s hard to know the difference between producing something of good quality versus trying to make something perfect before we let anyone else see it.
And for some perfectionists, the fear of not getting things “right” from the beginning (and here I’m putting “right” in quotes) slows them down to the point where NOTHING gets written at all.
This obviously creates a vicious cycle of doubt, fear, judgment, and ultimately, not getting anything done.
So my answer to all of this is to shoot for 85% (or at least a number that is more forgiving that also doesn’t make you cringe).
It needs to be a number that’s motivating for you.
In fact, one of my clients chose 50% as her number because anything higher than that stressed her out.
It should let your nervous system relax.
It allows you to embrace writing as a process where things improve over time—and not just see it in terms of a perfectly, and immediately, executed outcome.
Your writing becomes a low-stakes draft that you can send out for external feedback, and you’re able to ask for it sooner because everything is just a work-in-progress.
When I was a grad student and beyond, I tried to get my drafts in almost totally finished shape before I would let anyone see them.
Obviously, this took forever and was not enjoyable in the least.
But then I observed two of my peers do things in totally different ways, and move forward much faster, because they were not gripped by perfectionism.
Both benefited hugely from not trying to get things to 100%.
In the first case, I had been accepted to present at my first all-expenses paid workshop.
They were going to pay for my flight and two nights in a hotel, plus a distinguished faculty member was assigned to be the discussant on my panel.
I was both thrilled and incredibly anxious about my paper.
So I worked non-stop for a month, including at night in my bed, to turn out a complete 30-page paper, and even then I was worried about how it would read.
Then when I actually got to the panel, I realized another grad student co-panelist had turned in a half-written paper that was only 11 pages long!
I was totally shocked that someone would do this. And obviously the comments on her paper were pretty sparse.
But this person turned in what she had and didn’t seem particularly worried about it.
(And, in case you’re wondering, this person is now a tenured faculty member at an Ivy League school, so things worked out fine for her.)
I’m not saying that half-assing your writing is a good thing.
It just helped me see that maybe I didn’t need to kill myself to perfect something that was clearly meant to be just a draft.
Secondly, in grad school I had a close friend and writing group member who would write by doing massive brain dumps.
She would just write and write and write without editing.
Then she would show the work to other people, get good feedback, and only then would she hone things down.
Her style really stood out to me because I often spent an hour just trying to perfect one sentence of my dissertation before I allowed myself to move on.
This friend ultimately became one of the most productive scholars I know in terms of high-level publications.
While teaching 3 or 4 courses per semester at her university, she has managed to publish two sole-authored books and place articles in nearly all of the top-ranked journals in her field!
So letting go of perfectionism and letting others help you earlier are huge factors in your professional success.
2) Work less, but in a more focused way
My second main strategy for cutting down on internal resistance to work less, but in a more focused way.
So a lot of productivity scholars talk about working smarter, not harder.
It may sound cliché, but it’s actually super effective.
Doing this requires you to find a regular writing slot where you are most alert and writing only during that time of day.
This is what writing coach Cathy Mazak calls “tiger time.”
In a blog post titled, “Why You Don’t Have to Write Every Day (and What to Do Instead),” she talks about why trying to write everyday could actually be counterproductive.
Instead, she says, “write during your best, most focused, most high energy times, and do not write at other times.”
So, to find your tiger time, she recommends keeping a journal for five days.
Every hour, reflect on how you’re feeling, then mark that hour with different colors based on how you’re feeling.
For example, she suggests using green to signal the time when you have the most energy, inspiration and drive;
blue when you’re still energized but slowing down;
orange when you’re distracted or procrastinating;
and red when you’re completely exhausted.
After the 5 days, look back over your color-coded journal. Green is your tiger time, while blue is your second-best choice.
Then she recommends using this guide to block off consistent 1-2 hour time slots on your calendar.
This system works well for folks who only have short periods of time to write and are juggling a lot of different obligations.
It also relieves people of guilt for doing things like not working at night since you’re not going to get much done anyway.
On the other hand, many of my clients actually do better with taking one entire day a week and writing in a long block.
These folks need longer to get into the headspace of writing and orient themselves, and once they’re in the flow, they like to keep going.
So this works too. The key is to be consistent and to not let other things get in the way.
And one more thing—if you’ve been avoiding doing a particular task or piece of writing because it’s hard, turn to it first when your energy tank is still full.
#3: Cut Down on Distractions
This gets us to my third suggestion for reducing writing resistance, which is to cut down on any and all distractions.
Studies show that the more you switch between tasks in a day, the less energy you have overall.
So here’s four things you can do to cut down on task-switching:
The first is to implement an email rule.
For many people, doing email completely intrudes on their writing time and a two-hour slot easily turns into just one.
Even though people know that if they answer emails, they’re more likely adding more work to their plates, they often feel obligated to help other people over helping themselves.
And there’s also the attraction of getting an endorphin hit from completing a task and being able to cross it off your list.
An email rule is something that keeps you from checking any email during your writing slot.
It could be something like, “I will check emails for 30 minutes max before I write.”
Or a lot of my clients will only check emails after lunch for an hour and actually put that into their calendar.
Secondly, you should turn off all of your notifications on your phone and your computer.
A third thing you should do if you’re sharing a household with other people is to let them know you’re completely unavailable during that time, except in the case of emergency.
And finally, if you are someone who tends to break your day up with errands, you could consider ways to combine them so you can save time and not have to task switch as much.
For example, one of my clients realized it was better for her writing and energy level if she combined grocery shopping and other mundane tasks with picking her kids up from school.
4. Co-write with Others
So this gets us to my fourth and final strategy for reducing writing resistance, which is to co-write with others.
There are so many obvious reasons why working alongside other people is useful for writing.
The first is that it provides a motivational boost.
One of the hardest things about writing is that it can be such a solitary endeavor, and it's easy to feel isolated.
That isolation makes the typical self-doubts and anxieties people already have about writing much worse.
Co-writing sessions provide motivation, a sense of camaraderie and social connection.
Knowing that others are working alongside you and you have someone to share your struggles with and celebrate your successes with can help you stay focused on your goals.
Co-writing also creates a sense of external accountability that can be otherwise lacking when you’re working on a long-term project like a book.
When you commit to weekly writing sessions with others, there's a shared responsibility to show up and to make progress.
It's like having workout buddies but for your writing goals!
Now that everyone’s on Zoom, it’s relatively easy to meet up and work together.
And if you don’t have a regular writing group or writing partners, they’re easy to find online.
On the episode page, I link to a post by developmental editor Laura Portwood-Stacer that lists out a bunch of different free co-writing groups you can join today, so check that out.
I’ve even matched some of my clients up with one another to co-write, and it’s been working out well for them.
I know that co-writing for a couple hours every weekday is the key to one of my clients finally finishing a full draft of her manuscript, which is now out for review at a top press.
Summing It All Up
So there you have it—my advice for ways to cut down on your dread of writing.
Let me sum up my four main points here:
First, employ the 85% rule.
Second, work less but in a more focused way by establishing writing routine based on when you’re most alert.
Third, cut down on any and all distractions (especially email).
And fourth, co-write with others for companionship and accountability.
Finally, I just want you to remember a few things:
Everyone dreads writing at some point. You are not alone!
And keep in mind that dread actually sucks up all of your energy and procrastination often takes just as much effort as actually just doing the thing.
The trick is to make a lot of small, intentional decisions ahead of time so that your inner resistance doesn’t have as much fuel.
Good luck trying out these strategies, and get in touch if you need more help.
I’ll talk to you again soon!