It’s okay if you skip your writing session…
Do this instead…
"I’m going to write today. I’ve got a session on the calendar.”
Famous last words.
Words my lips have uttered many times. Words my ears have welcomed from across the other side of the Zoom, as my clients make their promises to themselves with me as their witness.
And then sometimes, just sometimes…comes the mea culpa: “I didn’t get to my writing today. I’m not sure what happened. But I’ve got another session on the calendar…”
When this was me in my twenties, I had a great answer to this kind of slippery setup. If I didn’t write, I would at least do something else “productive,” so the time wouldn’t be lost. As a budding Italian literature scholar, I forced myself to sit at my desk and translate pages of my favorite novel, Curzio Malaparte’s La pelle [The Skin].
The exercise never yielded a passable translation. It definitely improved my look-it-up-in-the-dictionary skills, but if I was actually trying to get back to my writing, it wasn’t the most on-point solution.
So here’s lesson 1: If you skip your writing session, don’t punish yourself or enforce some kind of alternate productivity.
Here’s why: if you say you want to write and are going to write and then you don’t write…that’s known in the psych biz as self-sabotage. There’s something going on here, and if you paper it over with busy-ness, you’ll miss the chance to get a valuable insight into the inner workings of your mind.
As a writing coach and a writer, I don’t want my client’s mea culpas or my own. I want to know why the writing isn’t happening, so we can get to the bottom of it. Is it because…
You don’t have the bandwidth?
You aren’t really convinced about your writing project?
You need to set up the habit - and maybe some accountability wouldn’t hurt?
Your creativity is ooo?
You need someone to bounce ideas off of?
So here’s what you need to do if you skip your writing session: Write down why.
Today I didn’t write because I…
…stared at a blank screen while my inner critic shouted at me, until I decided to go do the laundry.
AND…I plan to sit back down at this time/date to write ______________.
Then, when that time rolls around, if you actually sit down and do the thing, fabulous. But if you’ve got another justification teed up, it’s time to zoom in a little more carefully.
I find there are several big reasons why we don’t write when we say we will – each of which will get further consideration in future posts. But here’s a cheat sheet in the meantime.
Time. There are not enough hours in the day, in between your day job, your night job, your self-care, your family… When this is the issue, you need to look to outsources, automating or cutting the fat. Can you get a meal delivery service? Can you delegate some of your work? No? In that case, it really might not be time to write a book right now. You’ve got a lot going on.
You have other priorities & passions. If you consistently skip writing to do other things that make you feel good, like exercise, socialize, cook, volunteer, garden… Great! Don’t despair. Writing can go hand-in-hand with these activities. (I’ll discuss in another post how spending time on your passions can help you write.)
Your inner critic is putting in extra hours. If you make it to your writing space and then come up short because the voice in your head is shouting itself hoarse, you’re going to have to make friends with it if you want it to let you get to work. I write more about that here.
You’re stuck in the starting line. If you don’t know how to get started, you’ve got to do the foundational work first. Brainstorming, doodling, staring at clouds, talking to your exercise buddy (supportive people only!), or a coach.
You’re lost in the weeds. You’ve already put in a lot of time – too much! – and you don’t know where to go next. When your progress has slowed, an outside pair of eyes (again, supportive people only!) can help you zoom out and find the path again.
Want to talk more about not writing? It’s one of my favorite ways to climb over writer’s block. Say hi!
