How to procrastinate productively

Photo by Eric Han

Procrastination is a tricky thing. We all need to take breaks from the actual fingertips-to-keyboard part of the writing and editing processes, but too often those breaks turn into a wasted evening, day, or weekend. Not only do those hours or days represent lost time, but the longer we're away from our manuscripts, the more work we have to do to get back into them. One effective method of avoiding this productivity slump is to make sure our down-time includes activities that will ultimately lead us back to our writing. With that in mind, here are some suggestions on what to do when you need to close your Word document for a bit (but only a bit).

1. Take a walk/exercise in front of your work space/clean

Despite both the ubiquitous nature of this advice and the fact that it's mostly relevant to those who work from home, a list of productive procrastination activities would be incomplete without a reminder to occasionally get out of your seat and move. Walking (or running, if that's more your speed) truly does help clear the mind. If you go with a buddy, it can also be a good opportunity to talk through any roadblocks in your manuscript, while naturally limiting the conversation to a concise amount of time. However, if the weather's bad, you live in a place where walking isn't safe, or you just don't trust yourself to get back to work when you return home, simply exercising for 5–15 minutes in the same room as your computer could be the better option. Doing chores that require little active thought, such as decluttering your work space or cleaning dishes, can similarly help quiet your brain and leave you feeling better and ready to get back to work when you're done.  

2. Find online media that motivates you

As much as spaces like YouTube can lead to massive amounts of wasted time, they can also serve as useful reservoirs of information and community. Personally, I find YouTuber and self-published writer Jenna Moreci's funny, opinionated, no-excuses brand of tough love to be a good balance of I-needed-that laughter and time-to-get-back-to-work guilt. On the other hand, channels like Just Write, ScreenPrism, Pop Culture Detective, and Lessons from the Screenplay, which offer thoughtful critiques on books, film, or TV, can push you to think about your own work in more analytical ways and give you a better sense for how your story or approach fits into the broader fiction landscape. Thinking deeply about what makes a narrative good (or bad) can be a great motivator for getting back to your own stellar ideas. Although more niche, I also like the channel Alt Shift X for its deep dives into some of the more obscure aspects and theories of Game of Thrones/A Song of Ice and Fire. Seeing work being treated with that degree of thought, respect, and excitement is pretty fantastic inspiration for anyone writing science fiction, fantasy, or anything else with highly complex world building and plot. 

3. Do research that relates back to your book

Whether you need to know how long a particular poison takes to work, when corsets came into fashion, or how to properly use a semi-colon, almost every project requires research. Do some Googling, pull a book off your shelf, look up possible sources at your local library, or check Amazon.com. Even if you don't want to buy from Amazon, they may list books that your library doesn't have but could request for you from another source. Depending on the topic, Pinterest and YouTube are also useful places to start—as long as you can resist falling down their respective rabbit holes. 

4. Take an online class about writing, marketing, or other skills that can feed your career

Full disclosure, this inclusion is based largely on my own experiences over the last month in using SkillShare, a subscription-based online learning platform. Their classes are broken down into short segments that can be done all at once or parsed out over time, and I've been surprised by how effective they've been in delivering useful information and getting me excited to work on the non-writing/editing aspects of my career (like branding and marketing) that, prior to this month, I knew nothing about and was not looking forward to figuring out. However, there are a ton of online learning tools out there, and many of them are free. Regardless of the platform you use, taking online classes that relate to your current and future career is a great way to both better yourself and reinvigorate your dedication to your work.

5. Read

This one might seem like the most obvious suggestion on the list. After all, why become a writer if you don't want to read? However, I will confess that the more writing and editing I have on my plate, the less likely I am to pick up a published book. Wherever you stand on the enthusiasm spectrum, reading—especially reading critically—is still an important activity for every writer. Focusing on your genre will give you a clearer picture of how your work might fall in the marketplace, but reading outside of your genre may actually be better for your creativity.

6. Send a quick update to a writing buddy or cabin

Unless you're working in a professional writers' room, chances are good that you're doing most of your writing on your own. But as solitary an activity as writing can be, many people still benefit from some form of community, even if that community is spread far and wide. Sending quick updates to a writing buddy or, during Camp NaNoWriMo, to your writing cabin, can give you a sense of structure and accountability that usually leads to greater overall productivity.

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Of course, the best way to be productive is to actually be productive. So before you close your document and try one of the above suggestions, ask yourself whether you need the break or whether you're just trying to avoid facing your story. Be honest with yourself about your ability to stop whatever activity you choose and actually get back to work. And, of course, if you find activities that work for you, please share!

Beyond typos: five common mistakes in good manuscripts

Photo by Geran de Klerk

So far in my career as an editor, I've had the good fortune to work with a series of smart, talented writers whose work I actually enjoy reading, even as I nitpick my way through their manuscripts. But no matter how good the writer, every ms is prone to at least a few (fixable) weaknesses. Here are some of the most common I've come across, with suggestions on how to avoid or fix them.

1. Unintentionally repeated words or phrases 

Unintended repetition is by far the most common issue on this list. I have never read an unpublished manuscript in which it didn’t come up multiple times. In fact, I had to fix a few repeated words of my own as I wrote this post. The culprits might be commonplace crutches (like “therefore,” “as a result,” “however,” “even,” etc.) or more unique phrases that have stuck in our heads—often because we have just read them in our own writing—and probably feel like brilliant solutions each time we use them. Careful self-editing and a liberal use of the “Find” function in your word processing program will catch some of these, but you need another set of eyes (or, realistically, several sets of eyes) to fully eradicate them from your text. 

2. Timeline errors 

Timeline errors take several forms, but usually occur in manuscripts that jump around in time, either as part of the book's structure (for instance, when a first chapter actually takes place after most of the plot has occurred) or when characters must recount events that are not described elsewhere in the story (as in most mysteries). A good rule of thumb for combating timeline confusion is to consistently ask yourself whether the characters' ages progress at the same rate as each other and the major plot points. Do this while you are writing your text, because chronological errors are easy to read through in the self-editing and beta reading stages. To be truly certain your chronology makes sense, create a timeline that includes the ages of your characters and all plot points.

3. Lack of differentiation between the narrator’s/main character’s perspective and the author’s perspective 

Good readers expect to be challenged by characters who represent life experiences and world-views other than their own. As a result, characters can typically get away with thinking or saying whatever they want without much risk of personally offending or irritating the reader. Problems arise, however, when audiences feel they are expected to share the narrator’s point-of-view, a predicament that can leave them feeling frustrated, resentful, or even angry, and ends with them putting down the offending book and never picking up another by its author. To avoid this, show your characters' thought processes and make sure everything they say or do is clearly grounded in their experiences and personalities. When writing in third person, avoid using judgmental language until you switch to your character's perspective. When writing unreliable narrators, make sure you show the flaws in their logic by clearly juxtaposing their thoughts and actions with both reactions of other characters and plot developments that run contrary to their expectations.   

4. Assuming the reader sees the world the same way you do

This issue obviously goes hand-in-hand with the last one, but also extends to potential problems with world-building. Unless you have an in-depth understanding of your audience (and it’s usually best to assume you don’t), establishing a clearly defined world—from the psychological profiles of your characters to the details of your physical setting to the structure of your societies to the ways in which these aspects are interrelated—is crucial in communicating your vision to the strangers who will compose most of your audience.  

5. Unchecked biases 

Like it or not, who we are and what we believe comes out in our writing. This is especially true for culturally received ideas, including those that, when actively thought about, we might refute or even find disgusting. Although most writers steer clear of overt authorial bigotry, our biases can still come up in subtle ways, like casting the vast majority of powerful and professional characters as male and white, or having the only well-rounded characters be the ones that are essentially reflections of ourselves. There is no simple solution to this issue, but actively checking the gender and racial distribution of your characters and asking yourself whether the story itself presents a clear, logical reason for its demographics is a good place to start. Having a diversity of readers (and taking their critiques seriously) is also crucial. To be clear, I am not saying authors can't or shouldn't write stories that reflect societal biases, only that, when we do, those biases need to be firmly rooted in the worlds of our stories rather than the unexplored crevices of our own minds.