How To Not-Write — the 2021 Version
A Piece Written and Rewritten Since the late 70s.
Writers on Medium are given tons of advice on how not to write and how to keep at it. Writing gets better with practice. Paradoxically, it also gets better with not-writing! I expect I’ll forever revise this piece (here, the 2020 version is slightly edited for clarity). If nothing else, its many incarnations are a testament to how much easier not-writing has become.
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“Blau, you skip through life,” T. George Harris bellowed at me after reading my second attempt to write a “service” article for New York. “Why are you lumbering on paper?”
Founder of Psychology Today and American Health, T. George was then between the two, and it was my good fortune to have him as my first magazine editor. He patiently — and, in retrospect, miraculously — pushed me through four painful drafts of a piece that chronicled my own career transition from educational publishing to journalism, “How To Get Out of Your Job Rut.”
Each draft got shorter and clearer. However, each time I sat down to start the next revision, I feared I’d never truly learn to “skip” on the page, so I looked for something else to do. “How To Not Write” was born.
To This Day…
My procrastination pattern often goes like this: Assignment. Deadline. Research. Start to write. Writing gets hard. Confusion. Fear. I’ll never get it. Paralysis. Do something else.
I often fall back on favorite avoidance tactics, like cooking and researching (as long as it’s not about my topic) — in the old days, I could alphabetize my albums — but life always presents new opportunities to not write.
Here some of the strategies I employed in 2020:
- Get a puppy. Admittedly, having a puppy gives me “material.” I wrote about Rocky when he was 12-weeks old (“Welcoming a New Relationship), at 13 weeks (“ Baby Whispering Works on Puppies Too”), and at 15 weeks (“My Puppy Is In Charge”). He is now 6 months old — bigger, smarter, and decidedly more impish. I try in vain to stay one step ahead of him. Lots to write about but no time. Well-meaning acquaintances watch me wrangle this high-spirited little guy and say sympathetically, “Of course you’re not writing. Who could concentrate with a puppy like that underfoot?” [He is now 20 months old and only minimally calmer!]
- Get involved with your community. The Miami apartment I inherited was my writer’s retreat until 2016, when I was elected to the Board of Directors. To be sure, the experience of running a homeowners’ association split by politics and cultural differences is indeed something to write about — at once, fascinating and infuriating. But I was too immersed in the drama and the drudgery to actually write. Though I am happily no longer on the Board, I still occasionally pore over reports, send emails, and research relevant condo laws — all of which inspire me to not write.
- Talk. I talk a lot, talk to strangers, and sometimes talk too much. I ask a lot of questions and listen to the answers. I can’t talk and write at the same time. What I could do is keep a notebook of my conversations and observations throughout the day. But that would be writing.
- Sit in the sun [I was in warm weather when I wrote this] or take a walk. Thinking precedes writing. I might talk or text ideas into my phone. And I’ll sometimes send myself an email. But creating a digital file isn’t “writing.” I’m not putting pen to paper or my fingers on a keyboard. When a wave of guilt comes over me (for sitting in the sun as well as for not writing), I tell myself, I’ll write about this when I get home. The problem is, when I return to my apartment, I don’t necessarily take the time to write. Instead, I look for another way to not write!
- Dive into whatever makes the world disappear. For me, it’s crossword puzzles. Hand me a pen and a puzzle, especially an Acrostic or Diagramless from the Sunday New York Times, and I’m gone. Nothing else enters my mind or matters. I don’t ruminate on problems. I have no regrets. I experience “flow.” Best of all I never feel guilty about this not-writing strategy, because doing crossword puzzles is good for my brain. (So many of the things I like no longer are!)
I am NOT alone…
The above strategies can be adapted to not do whatever you are trying to avoid. Yes, you! Google “procrastination,” and you’ll find more than 54 million hits.
…“procrastination” itself comes from the Latin pro, which means “forward,” and crastinatus, which means “until next day.”
Clearly, I’m not the only one who’s channeling Scarlet O’Hara: I’ll think about it tomorrow. To justify our not-doing, we tell ourselves we don’t have time, we are busy with other things — we just can’t get to it. “It” might be anything from menial labor to major projects.
Making matters worse, in 2020 we are buffeted by what film, media, and theater professor Ethan Tussey calls “the procrastination economy” in his 2017 book. We don’t just binge on media, says Tussey, we also “snack,” filling little bits of our time with distractions that nourish our not-doing (and make others rich).
To successfully deal with your procrastination, you need to figure out why you procrastinate and how your procrastination is preventing you from achieving your goals, so you can formulate a concrete plan of action, based on appropriate that will help you deal with your reason for procrastination.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, before I get distracted, I’m going to upload this piece to my website, something I’ve been meaning to do all week — but have been not doing instead!
Originally published at https://melindablau.com on January 23, 2020.
Here’s the 2015 version of “How To Not Write.” Earlier versions are somewhere out there, too — on discarded hard drives and floppy discs — disintegrating if not already turned to dust!
If you liked this piece, you might enjoy “The Six Spiritual Laws of Distress” in which I reveal clever strategies for ignoring my Higher Self, “that part of me that is supposed to get wiser with age.”
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