This is from my upcoming book: Five Things that Will Keep Your Book From Being Published. It's a rough chapter, not yet fully edited, but I figure people might be interested.  

Never do today what you can put off until tomorrow.”

Someone who probably hasn’t ever sold a book.

Procrastination is the hidden killer of books. The problem is that writing a book isn’t like doing a shift at a diner, or for that matter, working as a manager. There are (unless you’re writing for someone else) no hard deadlines. No external forces that can tell you ‘this has to be done by now.’ It’s all on you.

And the problem is, in such a case, especially when the writing isn’t working as well as it should be, it’s easy to say: I’m gonna take a break. Maybe to go start something else. Or just, in the worst case, look at TVtropes for just an hour.

As an aside, nobody looks at TVtropes for “just an hour.”

The problem is that an hour can morph into a day, and then you have another idea, and… Yeah, you find yourself three weeks later, with maybe three hundred words to your name. At which point, you’ll probably finish your novel sometime around when Sol turns into a red giant.

Now, I’m going to state that procrastination is not “needing to do something else.” If you’re not paying all your bills with your writing, or you have a family, then you will obviously have competing claims on your time. That’s just life.

Procrastination is having the time to work on something, and then not using it. Sometimes, it can masquerade as doing something related to your work. Maybe you need to do just a little more research. Maybe you need to think about things just a little more. But at the end of the day, something is keeping you from working on your writing.

Before we any further, you need to ask a question: why are you procrastinating? Because the reason why you’re not getting things done really influences what you can do to change it. If you’re procrastinating because you’re afraid, well, go to chapter xx and then come back here, because your problem really isn’t procrastination.

If it’s because you’re bad with time management, there are a few things you can do. I’ll go over them here:

1. Take regular, timed breaks.
2. Set up a schedule.
3. Set up a word count.

Take regular breaks:

This sounds odd, if your problem is procrastination. But in truth, sometimes the issue can be you’re trying to put in too much work. That can build up into frustration, which can lead to you just saying “hell with it” and going and surfing Netflix.

A good solution to this is a regular break. If you find yourself hitting a wall after thirty minutes, work thirty minutes, and then have a ten minute break. If you do better with an hour and then a five minute break, do that. But the first thing you have to do is give yourself a set time both for work and break. If not, well, again, TVtropes awaits. If you have an alarm on your phone, use that. Alternately, an egg-timer can suffice, and has the benefit of not being something you can hit “pause” on.

The important thing here is to have a set time period and stick to it. Vague “I’ll get back to it in a little while” is the what procrastination is. Having a period where the bell dings and you know that it’s time to get back to work is one of the best tools to keep you from falling into bad habits.

Set up a schedule:

This is different from the above. If you’re lucky, and not all of us are, you can set an assigned time every day to do your work. Not, mind you, the only time you can work. If inspiration strikes, get to to writing.

No, this is a way to prepare a certain time of day, where you know you will be working. By doing so, you’ll start training yourself into a habit of mentally preparing to work during this time. For myself, it actually helps my writing, because my brain is now prepared to do the work of writing. Depending on how much time you have, you can have one, or several scheduled writing periods. Maybe you have kids going to school, so the best, quietest time to write is say, from the morning until the afternoon. Set that up, know that when you the clock hits the time oh your schedule, it’s time to start writing. During this period, outside of your break times, try to focus only on your writing.

Of course, schedules vary depending on your life. If you work, you may only be able to schedule some writing after work, or during a break. If you have kids, you may find that your schedule is “subject to the needs of the family.”

That’s fine. Outside factors aren’t under your control. The point is that here, we’re trying to fight our internal tendency to put stuff off. If the kids need help (or have accidentally set fire to the kitchen), go deal with that, then come back down, sit down and keep working for the rest of your scheduled writing. Even if you only get a little bit done, it reinforces that you’re here, working, and not just letting stuff go for ‘a little while.’

Set up a word count.

Some swear by this. I do it, but…. This is a double edged sword. Focusing on word count to the exclusion of other things can be a dangerous thing for a writer to do. First of all, there’s the fact that ‘the story is taking a lot of time’ isn’t predestination. We all know times when something just isn’t jelling, and that can lead to you realizing you’ve spent several hours on less than a thousand words—but those hours were valuable hours. If you are looking at your “must finish X words by today” sign, you may find yourself just throwing stuff at the page, which will either not look very good when you’re done…or just see you having to redo it all later. In either way, you lose more than you gain.

The other problem is that if you fail to meet your planned word count… That’s a failure, isn’t it? And if there’s one thing that no author should do, it is set themselves up for failure, because that is a very good way to see you just decide to give up. Humans don’t like failure, after all.

Also, this may lead a writer to ignoring or seeing some other parts of the writing process as less important. Editing, advertising, setting your online presence, those are all vital parts of making money as a writer, and yet they do not involve putting new words to paper.

That being said, there are some authors who swear by this method as a way to giving yourself some measurable progress meter. Personally, I have noticed that most of my friends who use this method got their start in writing ad copy or ghostwriting, where you must get a certain number of words out per hour of writing.

So if you’re going the word count route, I’d suggest three things:

Err on the side of caution.

Remember that word count isn’t everything.

Do not chain yourself to a number.

Err on the side of caution:

The first is the simplest. Don’t set yourself up for failure. If you average 1,000 words a day, don’t then proclaim that your daily word count will be 5,000 words. You’ll fail, and the only thing you’ll achieve is discouraging yourself. If you find yourself beating your projected word count, you can always increase it.

Remember that word count isn’t everything:

Remember that there is a lot of stuff that goes into your book. Are you spending two hours editing your book, looking for all those little typos or tightening up sentences? Great. That’s just as important as your basic daily word count. More important in some respects, because until your writing is publishable, it isn’t going to help you.

Because of this, rather than just focusing on word count, you should focus on achieving other goals. Maybe Tuesday, you want to write at least 2,000 words. That’s fine. But then, on Thursday, if your goal is proofing and editing those words, forget about any worries of word count. You’re making those 2,000 words useful.

Do not chain yourself to a number:

This can be a biggie. If you write 2,000 good words, you’re doing better than if you write 5,000 mediocre words or 10,000 horrible words. This gets to erring on the side of caution, but is also a reminder—everything in this chapter is about helping you write, and avoiding the procrastination demons. It’s not about writing a ton of stuff that is unreadable. Focus on a number that lets you spend enough time on every word that you can assume they’re good words, with the caveat that the only writers who can write publishable words in the first draft are those who have sold their souls to the devil.

Ultimately, remember that you need to choose a method that works for you. The goal isn’t to produce a zillion words a hour, but to ensure that you stick to being as productive as possible, and don’t turn into the person who is going to write the great American novel… tomorrow. Always tomorrow, and never today.