Writing time is precious. Made even more so by the fact that every time I sit down to write, there always seems to be something far more important, or more interesting I could waste time on *ahem* I mean see to. Sometimes it’s easy to tell when these tasks are actually procrastination in disguise, like the time I binged most of a God of War playthrough instead of editing. But sometimes procrastination is sneaky and hard to spot, hiding under the pretense that these tasks are way more important than they actually are.Here then, are four of the ways procrastination likes to sneak into your writing time instead of letting you get on with writing that book.
Networking
You surely can’t class networking as wasting time, right? As writers, it’s important for us to be an active part of the community and to make connections with the right people. If we’re not engaged with the community at all times, how can we ever expect our careers to take off? Networking is super important, and all those hours we spend scrolling Twitter will pay off in the long run, just you wait and see.
Reading
Heave you never read that famous quote by Stephen King? “If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.” Well, I’m working on the reading part of that. Besides, have you seen my TBR pile? I think that thing might be trying to eat me when my back is turned. Look, it’s not time wasted when I read books instead of writing. I’m researching how to write better. It’s a fact.
Blogging
Every writer should have a presence online. Mine is a blog, which I then have to make sure I keep updated often, and make sure all the comments are answered, and then visit other people’s blogs because networking is important to building up that online presence don’t forget. Trust me, all these hours are going to pay off in the end when I have the biggest and best blog to promote my book from, when I finally get around to finishing writing it.
Worldbuilding
Seriously? This is on the list? No writer has ever wasted time worldbuilding. The more you know about your fictional world the more real you can make it feel to your readers. That’s obviously why we’re still figuring out the finance system and naming the rest of the continents on the planet than neither appear in, nor are ever mentioned during the course of the story. Our books deserve this level of dedication, alright?
In all seriousness though, each of these things are important to build into our lives as writers. But equally as important is making sure that none of them take over our time for actually writing in. We can do the most amount of networking, build the best blogs, and have the most developed story worlds, but none of these will count for anything if in the end there isn’t a book for these activities to support. The sneakiest forms of procrastination are the ones that make us think that we’re actually working very hard, while nothing of great importance actually gets achieved.
These are just a few of the sneaky forms procrastination can take. Which seemingly important tasks do you tend to procrastinate on? (Or even tasks you know aren’t important. Procrastination takes all forms!) Which of these do you find yourself doing? Let’s chat in the comments below!
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