The Top 5 Ways Writers Waste Time

Written by a writer who has done them all.

As I’ve been working on my first draft slowly and steadily, I’ve realized that I have a talent that I wasn’t even aware of: the ability to waste chunks of time. Lots of time.

Photo by Noah Silliman on Unsplash

Maybe I’m feeling antsy at my computer. Maybe I’m just not feeling the scene I’m working on. But what happens next — ahem, dare I admit it — are some pretty ridiculous time wasters before I return to my draft. All writers are *very* good at procrastinating, and here’s what I’ve pinpointed works against me. Do you do any of these things?

Why finish my next chapter when I could…

Plan My Next Vacation.
I fall for this diversion quite often. Why not take a little detour away from my Word document and peruse Travel and Leisure’s Top Caribbean Islands list? That will lead me to click on one of the recommended hotels, maybe an excursion, and suddenly, I’m in Aruba or Curacao, reading TravelAdvisor reviews. Travel does inspire the imagination though, and letting my mind breathe for a few minutes does give me the energy to return to my writing. Maybe?

Describe in longwinded detail the setting in every scene.
It’s important that readers get a sense of the classroom (or beach! or house!) where a story is set, but more than a few sentences and readers are bored to tears. Where’s the action?, they wonder. This is something I waste time doing in my drafts because I love interior design — I tend to go a bit overboard on the decor in a room and cut it all out later. (I should be improving my plot. But where’s the fun in that?)

Scroll on social media, promising to post something about my own work, then scrolling some more — never posting anything.
The refrain that authors hear these days is that you need to build a brand. Brand, brand, brand! But I just want to keep writing books and wish that it was the old days where you could put out a book, go on a book tour and people would just find the novel in bookstores and applaud you! But alas, that is not how writers work these days. Sometimes going on social media feels obligatory, and then when I don’t have anything interesting to say, I feel hollowed out. I mean, not really, but kind of. I’ve come to think of social media as a flesh eating monster that takes a little bit of me every time I open it. All jokes are based in truth!

Research what the clothes were like in the 1950s, what the music was like. What everyone was talking about.
Historical fiction writers are 100 percent researchers and writers. For all of my novels, I’ve spent hours interviewing experts about the past, reading old articles, even listening to top 40 hits of the year that I’m writing about. But if I don’t rein in my love of research, I will spend hours doing this. Yesterday, my friend told me she was “keen” to come visit me this summer, and I needed to know if people in the 1950s might say that they were “keen” to do something, too. I suddenly needed to use that word in my story. A rabbit hole of research ensued. Thirty minutes wasted.

Shop for bathing suits.
Now this is punishment for abandoning my draft, isn’t it? Because while it’s fun to do some online shopping on J.Crew, it’s depressing when you realize that your characters would look much better in that bathing suit than you would. Limp back to my manuscript with a much clearer depiction of my main character somehow. Score?!

Become obsessed with making something NEW for dinner.
Bon Appetit, here I come! Top 40 Weeknight Dinners by Delish.com. You know I’m really avoiding my draft if I’m hunting down interesting dinner options. Even more so if I hustle out to the store for ingredients.

What do you do when you’re procrastinating your own work? Not like I need any more ideas, but I’m so curious to hear…