Procrastination: Myth, reality or your best friend in disguise?

 by Ruth Harris

I’d like to start this December 25 post by extending my heartiest congratulations to those Master Procrastinators who are still putting off their Christmas shopping. You’re the pros and we salute you!

Now to the rest of us:

My mission (and I chose to accept it) was to blog about The Big P so I turned to the global authorities on said subject. Not shrinks. Not self-help gurus. Not cubicle dwellers. Not housewives with a sink full of dishes & dust bunnies under the sofa. But … ta da!…wait for it!…the true, undisputed Rembrandts and Picassos, the acknowledged geniuses of the Art and Craft of Procrastinaion: Writers!

Who are able to luxuriate in every exquisite moment of guilt, self flagellation and despair. Who can wring every last drop from an orgy of self-loathing about not-writing. So, when I requested some info and insight, here is what I got:

            •           Humor, bitter

            •           Snark

            •           Promises to get back to me later (I’m still waiting)

            •           A single instant reply—which on closer examination turned out to be a

                        deviant form of procrastination

            •           Constructive, prescriptive recommendations

            •           Denial

                          

Jill Metcalf (Jill’s webpage) is the multi-published, award winning author of 5 historical romance novels. Jill took the competitive approach:

  “I would have answered this sooner but...I had to build a sand castle. Then I remembered, I don’t live near a beach. Then I remembered I had to make my bed...but it was made, so I un-made it and made it again. Then I remembered I had to do laundry, but I’d already done the laundry and it was dried and folded...so I washed it all again. Then I remembered...LOL.  I’m the Queen of Procrastination.”

As the Queen of Typos, I am honored to share my throne with Procrastination Royalty.

Still, all is not sand castles and laundry. Jill concluded by saying: “I have never failed to meet a deadline or an obligation. If I give my word, I keep it.”

Fact is, HRH, the Queen of Procrastination, has obviously found a way to make procrastination work for her. 

Shelly Thacker, (Shelly’s webpage) a bestselling author of historical and paranormal romances published by Dell and Avon, took a practical, constructive approach: “When it comes to beating procrastination, visuals work best for me. I like calendars, checklists, and charts. I keep a calendar next to my computer with page goals spelled out for each week, and a checklist of chapters completed so far. Watching those numbers go up is very motivating.”

For more tips, Shelly posted an excellent article which you will find here.

Shelly’s article is loaded with helpful—and very effective—ways to beat back The Big P. Her advice is practical, very doable and it works. She’s a pro who knows what she’s talking about.

Lawrence Block, (LB’s Blog) that sneaky devil, answered instantly (really!): Turns out keeping a beady eye on his email and replying quick-as-a-flash is Larry’s creative and (obviously) efficient way to devote himself to You Know What.

In the interest of complete disclosure, I must point out that LB’s method is certainly efficient. He’s been a bestselling writer for over fifty years, the author of the bestselling Matthew Scudder and Bernie Rhodenbarr series plus many, many, many more titles. Larry has written under a number of pseudonyms and was named a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America in 1993. His Liar's Bible: A Handbook for Fiction Writers and other books of writing advice are considered classics.

Consuelo Saah Baehr: (The Repurposed Writer) Years ago, Consuelo and I shared the famous/infamous editor, Michael Korda, when we were being publishing by Simon & Schuster. Consuelo’s been TradPubbed but now has gone digital. She’s the bestselling author of Nothing To Lose  and here’s what she has to say: 

“I was a procrastination junkie and, like all career junkies, I hid my addiction by doing hard things that looked good on paper but were not my real life's work.  Hey, I have a glamorous job, leave me alone.  

“Still, many mornings, I would get some whispers from the soul hole:   You haven't written anything new in years.  I bought a procrastination tape and wrote out my list. Write another book, lose twenty pounds, re-align my sinuses and my septum.

"’You are a doer,’" screamed the man on the tape. I listened to him every day.  Nothing.

 I tried magical thinking.  Nothing. Until about a year ago life shoved me in the path of the moving train called KDP.  

“My brain said "No."  Please.  Too hard. Two people told me it wasn't hard.  It was easy—Joe Konrath and Zoe Winters.  I thought, well, I can just put one foot in front of the other so I tried it.  I tried it early in the morning when I still had clear faculties and got lost in the work. 

 “I realized that the best antidote to procrastination is momentum. If you can take a few tiny steps and keep going, momentum will pull you along.”

Liliana Hart, multi-award-winning author of romantic suspense and mystery fiction,  (lilianahart.com) nailed it. Quoth Liliana: “Procrastination is commenting on your procrastination blog when I have 30k words left to write on a book that's due at the end of the month.”

Liliana was polite enough not to tell me to bug off with my stupid questions. And I wasn’t clueless enough to pester her again, either. I know a busy woman when I hear from one! And I also know Liliana will meet her deadline!

Now we come to the deniers. Or maybe they’re the realists. But there are writers who simply don’t believe in procrastination and/or being blocked (IME, very often the same thing).

Robert B. Parker, (http://www.robertbparker.net/author) of the Spencer and Jesse Stone series, didn’t believe in The Big P. He thought writers should think of themselves as plumbers.

You’ve heard of plumbers who don’t show up when they’re supposed to but have you ever heard of a plumber who couldn’t fix a faucet because he was in procrastination mode?  No way. He could say his kid was sick, he could say his car broke down, he could even say he had a terrible hangover and couldn’t fix your faucet.

But if you called him and the message on his voice mail informed you he was alphabetizing his complete collection of Super Bowl tapes and couldn’t fix your faucet, he’d be booted out of the plumbers union. Basically, Parker’s advice was: “Shut up, sit down, and write.”

D.D. Scott, bestselling romantic comedy and humorous mystery author  (ddscottville.blogspot.com) and Reigning Goddess of WG2E sees it the way Parker saw it.

D.D. was succinct. And pithy, too.

 She said, and I quote: “There's no such thing as procrastination...just get your butt in your chair & get your BITCHOK Groove in full gear!!!”

“BITCHOK?” I asked D.D. “Wot’s dat?” 

She explained: Butt In The Chair, Hands On Keyboard.

I replied: lmao. Although on second thought, I probably should have said lmbo.

D.D. and Parker are pros and they have the impressive body of work to prove it. 

Yeah, Ruth, I hear you say, but what about you?

I’m strictly a minor-league procrastinator and indulge only infrequently. In my experience whenever I start diddling and futzing around, organizing my spices or rooting through my medicine cabinet to get rid of the expired aspirin and cold meds, it means that I’m stuck. My sub-conscious is sending me a message and the message is always the same: You screwed up. Somewhere. Somehow.

Whether it’s a problem with plot, voice or characterization, procrastination is an alert, telling me to figure out where I’ve gone off track. To do that, I go back to the beginning—I mean that literally, we’re talking Page One here—and read very, very attentively and carefully until I can figure out what the problem is—whether one of omission or commission.

So, if you’re like me, you will consider procrastination your friend. The ally who is sending you an important message and doing its best to help you write and finish your book.

To make one final comment about the myth/reality/agony of procrastination, here’s an anonymous observation—sometimes attributed to Monty Python:

“Procrastination is like masturbation.  At first it feels good, but in the end you're only screwing yourself.”

So have a Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year and, whatever else you do, stop diddling around & finish the damn book!

So, scriveners, what are your favorite procrastination techniques?


This just in from MWiDP! Anne's Hollywood mystery, THE GATSBY GAME is a Christmas freebie on Amazon for the next three days. It hit #40 in Free Contemporary Fiction yesterday. And GHOSTWRITERS IN THE SKY  is only 99 cents for a limited time.

Fighting Those “This-Manuscript-Sucks” Demons: Advice from Two Bestselling Novelists: Ruth Harris and Michael Brandman.

Today Ruth brings us a great pep talk from screenwriter and mystery novelist Michael Brandman, who this year was asked to take over the Jesse Stone novels of the legendary mystery writer, the late Robert B. Parker.

How would you feel if you were suddenly asked to be the “continuator” of a book series written by your idol? Turns out we face the same fears no matter where we are on our writing journeys--and even award-winning screenwriters suffer moments of doubt

As Ruth tells us, the publishing business is full of more zigs and zags than any of us imagine. Certainly my own career has been zigzagging so fast recently I’m getting whiplash.

A year ago, I was almost ready to give up. I had two out-of-print books and five years’ worth of rejections on all my new novels. I’d had dozens of close-but-no-cigar reads from agents, but no offers. I seemed to be moving farther and farther from my dream of becoming a successful novelist. I had a little blog with less than a hundred followers and a fast-fading dream.

But this week, the revised edition of my comic thriller FOOD OF LOVE debuted in ebook, with paper to follow, and my romantic comedy THE BEST REVENGE will follow soon after.

And next week I’ll be announcing some more seriously awesome news about my own career. Blind-sided is the perfect word for it.

So here’s some great advice from a couple of pros:

BLIND-SIDED BY OPPORTUNITY: WHEN YOU NEVER SEE IT COMING

by Ruth Harris

The writer is all-too-often the last to know. Sometimes that applies to the ending of a novel which comes as a complete surprise—especially to the author. Other times, it’s the astonishing zigs and zags an entire career can take.

I’m known for my bestselling women’s fiction. My DH, Michael is known for his bestselling non-fiction. So, of course, we decided to do the next logical thing and write a thriller—a form both of us love whether in book or movie form, but neither of us had ever written before.

We wanted the challenge of trying something new and thought since we are both pros, we would know pretty soon if our thriller was working or not. Michael is an excellent editor with special strengths in organizing and outlining. I shine when it comes to manuscript editing, revising and rewriting. Depending on who felt more strongly about which scene, we both wrote first draft and the further we got into our thriller, the more convinced we became that we were on the right track.

We had surprised ourselves and become thriller writers.

And now HOOKED, a medical-political thriller, is on TWO Kindle best seller lists.

For my friend, Michael Brandman, a television writer and producer, the surprise he never saw coming was the chance to sub for his long-time friend and colleague, and mystery writing superstar, Robert B. Parker. Here’s Michael’s story:

REFLECTIONS OF A CONTINUATOR

by Michael Brandman

 Robert B. Parker died suddenly in January, 2010.

Bob was an Edgar winner, a Mystery Writers of America Grand Master, a prolific practitioner in the genre which he helped define. He was enormously skilled, a minimalist, whose simplicity of style and economy of language appeared effortless. 

I was a huge fan, gulping down his every offering, anxiously awaiting the next. Years ago, when I was offered the opportunity to meet him, I grabbed it. Thus began a decades long friendship and professional collaboration. 

We made twelve films together. We worked on two westerns, the first of which, “Louis L’Amour’s Crossfire Trail,” we revised, unbilled. The second, the re-make of Jack Schaefer’s “Monte Walsh,” we wrote together and were afforded credit.

We filmed adaptations of three of his Spenser novels. Bob wrote ‘em. I produced ‘em.

He lived to see seven of the Jesse Stone series of movies which Tom Selleck and I continue to write and produce for CBS. 

Bob and I talked constantly and over time, he shared many of his writerly stories and secrets with me. I listened avidly and learned a great deal. His work ethic was astonishing and he left behind a prodigious body of work to show for it. 

Late in April, 2010, I was hanging around, minding my own business, when I received a call from Helen Brann, Bob’s long time literary agent. She explained to me that the Parker estate was interested in continuing the Jesse Stone franchise of novels and they, along with Putnam’s, Bob’s publisher, were wondering if I might be interested in writing them. In becoming a “continuator.”

What????  Excuse me????  Continuing the franchise????  Writing Robert B. Parker novels????   Has someone out there lost his or her mind????

Of course I immediately agreed. I mean, what the hell. Why not?  The worst I could do would be to fall  on my face.

I told them I would do it on spec. I’d submit pages as I went along and they would read them and either encourage me or fire me. Fair enough, they said.

So I started. At first it became clear that I was no where near Bob’s voice.  Despite the fact that I had read everything he had ever written and had even briefly been his writing partner.

I wrote five chapters and threw five chapters away. A number of times.  They all stank.  So I decided to do an exercise in dialogue writing.  Having written and/or supervised the writing of all seven of the Jesse Stone movies, I figured that gave me a leg up on understanding each of the characters and how they spoke.

It started to work. I wrote numbers of conversations and began to get the feel of writing them as prose as opposed to script dialogue. 

Using the movies as a guide, I reasoned that at the start of the novel, Jesse should have nothing on his plate. He’s a small town police chief and he’s been reduced to writing parking tickets.  From that standing start, I filled his plate. Suddenly a spate of crime broke out. A killing. The infiltration of mob activity. His personal life also became enlivened. He met someone to whom he was attracted. He moved from his condo to a house, redolent of the house in which he lives in the movies. He adopted a cat.

As I trucked on, Bob’s voice became clear in my mind. Maybe because he was sitting on my shoulder, with a sharp stick in his hand. I found I was able to replicate his rhythms. Every sentence I wrote, I re-wrote several times...ridding it of gobbledygook, excessive verbiage, irrelevancies. It was an exercise in economy.  For the most part, it passed muster.

Bob’s long time editor, Christine C. Pepe, was assigned the book and both she and Ivan Held, the publisher, read the work in progress. As did Helen Brann. Although Chris would later come to dog me with much more detailed comments and notes, at the earliest stages, she was encouraging and immeasurably helpful.  

When I reached the mid-way point, approximately a hundred and fifty pages, Putnam’s gave me their official blessing. I blithely finished my first draft, submitted it and thought, hey, I’m a novelist.

For the next four months I worked avidly with Chris Pepe, making comprehensive revisions. Each time I thought I was done, there came another set of notes. And when Chris was done and I was once again in self-congratulatory mode, I encountered the copy editor.

By the end, however, each revision made the book better. Chris’s unerring ear for Bob’s rhythms and style brought me closer to what I had originally hoped to achieve.

I still shudder when I read it. My biggest fear is that I’ll bring the entire franchise crashing down around me.  Although Joan Parker, Bob’s widow, continues to encourage me by suggesting that somewhere Bob is smiling, I interpret that to mean that he’s somewhere snarling, questioning the logic of why the escutcheon was handed over to a blithering idiot.

Yet, somehow, Putnam’s agreed to publish it. And although I learned from my years as a filmmaker never to read reviews, I did sneak a peek at some of the early notices and in the immortal words of Sally Field, “They like it. They really like it.”

Putnam’s has rewarded me with a two book contract and I’ve already completed the draft of my second Jesse Stone novel, FOOL ME TWICE, which will be published in 2012. 

It’s been a great adventure. It taught me that after years of finding ways of convincing myself not to write fiction, I should have “taken the bull between my teeth,” as Sam Goldwyn was fond of saying, and done it a whole lot sooner.

For those of you out there sitting on your hands and convincing yourself not to write that novel you’ve always dreamed of writing, quit it. Do it. Full speed ahead. You have nothing to lose. And everything to gain.

And as Bob Parker was fond of saying, “Please buy my book.”

 *******

Michael Brandman is the television and film producer who, along with Tom Selleck, wrote and produced Robert B. Parker's Jesse Stone movies for CBS. Production was recently completed on an eighth Jesse Stone CBS movie, "Benefit of the Doubt.". After Mr. Parker's death, Michael who had a long association with the author, wrote a new Jesse Stone novel, KILLING THE BLUES, published by G.P. Putnam's Sons in September, 2011.

*******

Michael is right: Full speed ahead. You all know the famous story of Stephen King’s wife rescuing his manuscript of CARRIE from the trash, the novel that started his spectacular career. SK got discouraged and dumped it. His wife—as wives often do—knew better.

Do you ever think of giving up? Don’t. Ass to chair. Nose to grindstone (aka computer screen). Keep slogging away. Deal with your demons—the insecurity demons, the I-can’t-do-this demons, the lousy-review demons, the this-manuscript-sucks demons—because, if you’re a writer, you just never know what’s going to happen next. After all, what have you got to lose—except the completely unanticipated surprise that can turn your life and career round?

Have you ever had a moment when you were about to give up the writing dream, only to have some unexpected opportunity come at you from nowhere and get you back on track? We’d love to hear your stories.

Ruth has some very nice cyberink at Kindle Nation Daily this week along with an excerpt from her newly re-released novel DECADES, first of her 20th Century Trilogy.

Today Anne is blogging over at Mark Williams International http://markwilliamsinternational.com/ with more advice about riding the roller coaster that is 21^st century publishing.