How to Avoid Your Book
(or…how to deal with paralyzing fear and get your writing done anyways)
All right, so I’ve felt a little stalled this week. The book is coming along, but the writing is slow.
I’ve done everything else instead:
- I’ve talked about my book
- shared part of it with two friends
- researched on it, found an article I needed
- got the name of a good agent that represents books like mine from a published author
- made a list of next-steps and to-do’s for the draft
- planned how to do a good structural edit that will hook the reader and keep the story flowing
- dreamed about it – said hello in a dream to someone I need to contact for research, someone I hadn’t thought of before.
- jotted details on random note cards for the draft
- jotted details on a fiction story that has been bugging me to be written
- cleaned my desk and got my self reorganized
- I did the spice cabinet, too. And the pantry. And my sock drawer.
- wrote a blog post
- posted on Instagram about my book
- reviewed my early notes and brainstorm sessions – am I missing anything? Why do I have all these colored Post-it notes in random patterns in my notebook? Oh, yeah.
- I started thinking about my book proposal.
- And now I have a list of action items and next steps for that, too.
And I wrote about 2k words total this week. Not much. Not enough. But it was some.
Plus all that.
I’m calling it progress.