What Counts as Writing? And What Doesn't?

Playing Candy Crush isn’t writing, and I think we all accept that. Going to the gym or cooking or cleaning the fridge aren’t writing either, but as necessary and healthy parts of daily life it is far easier to rationalise doing them at times when we could be writing.

When faced with the blank page or hundreds of ideas we can’t form into coherent sentences, it’s very tempting to do something else instead.

“I’ll think it over while I load the dishwasher”

“I get my best ideas when I’m out on a run”

“I have to make the dinner anyway, I’ll do it now and write later”

These are the writer’s forms of telling yourself you’ll get up early in the morning and do your homework before school? And how well did that ever work out?

Procrastination is a part of life for many of us, it is frustrating but it feels inevitable. Knowing you are putting something off drains your energy, takes up mental space and makes you feel terrible. You know that, and yet you can’t stop. We’ve all been there.

There are many tools we can use to help manage the urge to put things off and I will cover them in other posts and far more in depth in any of my coaching packages. I’m going to come right out and say it though, procrastination isn’t the problem. The problem is mindset. And that can be changed.

What’s a more insidious problem than putting things off until tomorrow, and knowing that you are doing so, is doing nothing in a doing something kind of way.

In the novel Red Dwarf by Grant Naylor, the character Arnold RImmer is studying for his Astronavigation exam. An exam he has already failed eleven times. In his desperation to pass the exam, he creates complex revision plans to cover three months’ worth of studying. He spends so long on these plans that he has to cram all his studying into the three days before the exam. Which he then fails.

Like most people faced with tasks they find hateful, he devised more and more elaborate ways of not doing it in a ‘doing it’ kind of way . Grant Naylor, Red Dwarf, 1989

This is a worse trap to fall into as a writer than simply procrastinating. This derails writing dreams and causes writers to quit just as much as putting off starting for so long that you never do. In some ways it is even worse. This type of procrastinating damages our self esteem because we feel like we have been writing and we have nothing to show for it. If we have any doubts about our ability as a writer, this behaviour will only reinforce them. The human mind looks for evidence to prove what it already thinks. By spending hours not writing but feeling like we are, we “prove” to ourselves that we can’t do this.

On all levels, we understand that playing Candy Crush, or my personal favourite Two Dots, does not help us get that novel written. It’s a time suck but it’s fun and relaxing and maybe we are slightly addicted to it. Cooking and cleaning need to get done and it’s easy to rationalise taking the time to do them. What is different is the illusion of productivity.

The illusion of productivity is when we are doing anything other than writing fresh words of a first draft or adding/changing words in a subsequent draft and we think we are writing.

• Candy crush, cleaning, exercising - not writing

• Reading fiction - not writing

• Meditating - not writing

• Reading books about writing - not writing

• Taking an online course about writing - not writing

• Editing an unfinished first draft - not writing

• Listening to a podcast about writing while you do the dishes - not writing

• Listening to an audiobook about writing while you go for a run - not writing

• Talking about writing - not writing

• Reading what you wrote yesterday and tinkering about with the odd word - not writing

• Texting your friends about whether or not you just wrote is good or not - not writing

• Starting a new novel when you are trying to write a screenplay - I’m going to go with not writing, even though technically it is, and in some ways I recommend it as a way to get through writer's block, it isn’t progressing you in your intended writing goal and therefore is a form of not doing in a doing kind of way

Now all of these things play a part in the overall writing process, even possibly Candy Crush, but they are not writing.

If you don’t ever read fiction, I am not sure you can be a successful novelist, but reading endlessly instead of writing is also detrimental. Meditating, exercising, eating well and getting plenty of sleep are the cornerstones of getting anything in life done, especially creative pursuits, but, you guessed it, they are not writing.

Reading about writing can improve your writing, and is interesting in its own right. I recommend several books on the craft of writing and taking the time to read them and understand them will benefit you hugely. But it isn’t writing.

Writing means sitting down at a laptop, or with a pad of paper, or whatever app you choose, and putting down new words. They don’t have to be the best words, they don’t even have to be good words, but without writing something you will never be able to complete a novel, screenplay, ransom note or anthology of poetry.

You can’t edit a blank page and whatever you write can be shaped, moulded and improved at a later date. I also think it’s fine to write things like “insert fight scene here”, “add jokes” or “describe alien spaceship” as placemarkers. Writing “they discuss the suspects in the murder case” and then moving on to the next scene is more useful at times than struggling over dialogue or trying to iron out plot details before they happen.

It is better to write 50,000 poorly spelled words with two characters with the same name and a plot hole the size of Wales than to spend the rest of your life agonising about making things perfect. You can edit the first draft, you can pay someone else to edit it, you can force your friends to read it and help you refine it or you can self publish an unedited manuscript and see what happens. You can’t do any of those things if you never finish.

As I say in every blog post, writing is about mindset. Well this time I am going to add to it slightly and say that at some point you have to actually write. Get your mindset where it needs to be and your attitude in alignment with what you want to achieve and writing will be much easier. You’ll find it much more enjoyable and natural to write, and your writing will flow more easily, but you still have to actually put the words down on the page one way or another.

So close this page, turn off your music, pour a glass of water, set a timer for twenty minutes. And. Actually. Write.

Love,

Cat.