Putting it off...and putting it off...and putting it off

I don't like procrastinating while I'm doing it. I mentally kick myself for putting of writing. Or I try to bribe myself out of it. Usually with the promise of chocolate, or an extra hour to watch mindless television or waste on the Internet. It isn't a rare thing for me. I procrastinate all the time. Probably every day. I'll take just a little time to research something I don't need. Or I'll watch just another five minutes of news, because in my obsessive mind I'll be out of touch with the world if I don't know every single thing that's going on. I'll be just as out of touch if I don't check my e-mail one more time.

Some writers probably don't need the delay, but I do. I get ideas when I'm not obsessing over what I'm currently writing. And sometimes that little time I spend on extra research gives me an idea for a novel down the line, or a query I can pitch. And sometimes this leads to more than just procrastination. Sometimes this becomes me scheduling a project for further off in the future so I can have time to think about what I want to do.


Over the last several weeks I've been trying to figure out what I'll write next once my current work in progress is finished. At first I knew exactly what I was going to do: a regency romance. Which morphed into a romance in the late 19th century. But then I thought maybe it should be a paranormal. Or maybe a mystery. Or thriller. Maybe all of these things combined. Suddenly I had a huge novel I was writing entirely in my head. One trip to the library and weeks of just thinking about this huge novel made me realize that something was wrong. It might be that the research is a little too daunting for me right now, but I'm not ready to write it. And that's fine because I had another idea. And after taking a couple of weeks to think about it and do some research, I feel like this is the novel I'm ready to do after my current project.

I don't think I'll ever be the kind of writer who can just start writing fiction the minute an idea comes into my head. I've tried, and as it turns out, I'm not very good at that. I just have to work on finding a balance between using valuable writing time and letting my ideas evolve.

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