As a writer, you’re familiar with the constant internal battle between productivity and procrastination. Let’s face it: we all have grand aspirations of churning out thousands of words every day, but somehow, we often end up spending hours doing anything but writing. Fear not, fellow procrastinators! In this blog, I’ll share my tried-and-tested techniques for procrastination, all while giving off the illusion of productivity.

Step 1: The “Research” Black Hole

It starts innocently enough: you just need to look up a quick fact for your novel. Maybe it’s the height of a medieval tower or the proper way to make bread in the 9th century (I mean, it’s crucial to the plot, right?). So, you open a browser and begin what you assume will be a two-minute research session. But hours later, you’re knee-deep in Wikipedia articles about castle architecture and have somehow veered off into a rabbit hole about time-travelling lizards.

Do you have any new words written? No. But do you now know more than you ever wanted to about the blacksmithing techniques of the Anglo-Saxons ? Absolutely.

Step 2: Organise Your Writing Space (Again)

You can’t possibly start writing in a cluttered environment, can you? Cue the compulsive need to organize. Suddenly, that mess of papers you’ve ignored for weeks becomes the most important thing in your life. You find yourself Marie Kondo-ing your entire desk. Does that crumpled receipt from three months ago spark joy? No? Into the bin it goes.

Sure, your workspace is now cleaner than a sterile lab, but how many words have you written? Zilch. At least you’re now living in a minimalistic zen!

Step 3: Create Detailed Writing Plans (But Don’t Actually Write)

Ah, the beauty of planning. This is a fantastic way to procrastinate while convincing yourself that you’re being productive. You can easily spend hours creating colour-coded outlines for each chapter, mapping out character arcs, and brainstorming your plot twists. You even make a timeline of events with precise dates and locations, as if you’re preparing to submit your novel to NASA.

You’ve got pages of plans, charts, and character backstories that no one will ever read, but ask yourself: where’s the novel? Exactly.

Step 4: The Art of Perfecting the First Sentence

Everyone knows the first sentence is the most important part of any book. After all, it’s what hooks readers, right? So, naturally, you spend hours crafting, editing, and re-editing that first line. At this rate, you’ll have written fifty different versions, each one slightly tweaked from the last. “It was a dark and stormy night” becomes “On the darkest of stormy nights…” then “A storm raged, and darkness settled…”

You get the picture. You’re an artist, sculpting a sentence to perfection! But the sad truth is, while you’ve been obsessing over those first few words, the rest of the novel is still waiting to be written.

But don’t worry—once you get that first line right, the rest will totally flow. (Or not. Probably not.)

Step 5: “I’ll Just Check Social Media Really Quickly…”

The classic. Just a quick check of insta to see if anyone has liked your latest post. And while you’re there, you might as well scroll a bit, right? Twenty minutes later, you’re laughing at cat memes, watching a video of someone making tiny pancakes for their hamster, and somehow browsing photos of your kids as babies.

In your head, this is just a small break. You’re refreshing your brain, right? You’ll be even more focused when you get back to writing. An hour later: still scrolling.

Step 6: Tweak Your Writing Playlist

Music is essential for setting the right mood while writing, and clearly, your current playlist just isn’t cutting it. So, naturally, you spend an absurd amount of time curating the perfect writing playlist. Should you go with classical music? Epic movie soundtracks? That lo-fi study beats playlist with the girl and her cat? What if your playlist needs a little more indie folk?

After spending a good chunk of the afternoon picking songs, creating mood playlists for each scene, and debating whether the instrumental version of that song is better for dialogue scenes, you realize something important: you’ve been playlisting, not writing.

But, when you finally sit down to work, you’ll have the perfect background music.

Step 7: Engage in “Productive” Procrastination Tasks

The golden form of procrastination: doing things that feel productive but are still ultimately work avoidance tactics. This could involve updating your website, responding to emails, or tweaking your social media profiles. Or maybe you’re doing “important” tasks like reorganising your bookshelves by genre and colour or alphabetising your spice rack? (yes, it’s a thing).

You tell yourself, “Well, these are all necessary tasks for my writer’s life.” But let’s be real—no one is going to care whether your Instagram bio has been optimised if you haven’t actually written anything new.

Step 8: The Perfectionist Trap

This is the procrastinator’s pièce de résistance: endlessly editing. You can’t move on to Chapter 2 until Chapter 1 is perfect, right? You’ll spend weeks making tiny tweaks, rewording sentences, changing character names, and moving commas around like a word surgeon. It’s only natural—you can’t possibly write Chapter 3 if Chapter 1 is still a work in progress!

Somehow, though, this “perfecting” process just keeps going and going… until you’ve forgotten what your story was about in the first place.

Step 9: Writing Snacks and the Perfect Cup of Tea

Food is important, obviously. You can’t write on an empty stomach, so snack breaks are essential. However, choosing the right snack is a process in itself. Do you want something light and crunchy, or a bit more indulgent? You can’t decide, so you spend a bit of time rummaging through the kitchen, sampling crisps, maybe making a quick sandwich, and—oh, wait, is it lunchtime already?

Now that you’ve got your snack, you need the perfect cup of tea (or coffee). But wait, that first cup wasn’t quite right—maybe the water temperature was off, or you used the wrong tea blend. Time for another round!

Snack prepared; tea brewed—you’re finally ready to write. Or maybe not, because now you’re feeling a bit sleepy after all those snacks.

Step 10: “I’ll Start Tomorrow”

The crown jewel of procrastination: the promise of tomorrow. “I’m not really in the zone today,” you say, as you tidy up your desk for the hundredth time. “But tomorrow—tomorrow will be the day I really get stuck into writing.”

This is perhaps the most dangerous procrastination tactic, because it’s so easy to convince yourself that tomorrow will be the magical day when all distractions disappear, your creative juices will flow effortlessly, and the novel will practically write itself. Spoiler alert: tomorrow will probably involve just as much procrastination as today.

But, on the plus side, you’ll have a spotless desk and an impeccable writing playlist ready.

The Takeaway: Procrastination is a Fine Art

At the end of the day, we writers have mastered the fine art of procrastination. Sure, we might not be writing as much as we planned, but we’re incredibly busy doing all the things around writing.

And if anyone ever questions your productivity, just remind them that research and preparation are crucial parts of the writing process. You’re simply doing what all great authors do… or so you’ll tell yourself as you dive back into that black hole of procrastination.

Happy writing,

Ali x