How to Beat Procrastination

It’s a strange phenomenon that when we want nothing more than to write, we will often do whatever we can to avoid it. What kind of writer doesn’t write?, we think. Here I am, not doing the thing that I feel so lucky to be able to do.

It’s tempting to call it laziness – but procrastination is more often caused by fear. We don’t want to sit down and write something, because we’re nervous that it won’t be good. In fact, there’s nothing irrational about that: in the early stages of a project, most writing is not very good.

If you find yourself in this mode, your best tactic is to comfort and negotiate with yourself like a child – rather than getting furious with yourself, which will really kill off confidence. Remember that nobody is immune to procrastination. For proof, see a recent social-media post by Marian Keyes – one of the best-selling Irish novelists of all time, with dozens of books under her belt. ‘After a lengthy hiatus from writing fiction I’m trying to start again today and I am F*CKING TERRIFIED,’ she wrote. ‘Like TEARFUL with fear. How did I ever do it?????? I just want to run away and hide forever.’

If it can happen to a consummate professional like Keyes, it can happen to any of us – and like her, we can all get through it. The goal is to get over the hurdle of procrastination and into the flow state, when we’re absorbed in the work and will be carried along by its momentum. Here are some tricks that work for me, and have worked for the writers with whom I discuss the process in my book, In Writing: Conversations on Inspiration, Perspiration and Creative Desperation.

Get away from your phone
Meg Mason, author of Sorrow & Bliss, described the phone as having an analgesic effect; when we’re struggling, we reach for it automatically for an emotional pain relief. The problem is that this interrupts our concentration and puts us back to square one in trying to find that flow. Mason sometimes goes outside and locks her phone in the glovebox of her car, to make it as inconvenient as possible to fetch it when the urge strikes.


Create a time constraint
The novelist Liane Moriarty was given an hourglass by a friend, and when she’s stuck, she turns it over and tells herself that she just has to sit there and write until the sand runs out. Try setting a timer for thirty minutes or an hour; it might be painful, but it’s such a short period that the end is always in sight. Even if you have to do it three days in a row, you’ll eventually get through the hardest bit and back into the flow.
 

Try a change of location
The screenwriter and playwright Lucy Prebble once hired an office outside her home. ‘It was incredibly useful in the fight against procrastination, because you go to a different space that isn’t particularly fun to be in, where the whole thing is about writing,’ she said. ‘You know that when you’ve finished your work for the day, you then get to go home, which you get to associate with relaxation. That psychological divide was really helpful, and I wished I’d done it years before.’ I sometimes find it helpful to take my laptop to a cafe where the seats are slightly uncomfortable and I know that after an hour, they’ll expect me to buy a second coffee. Suddenly, I’m in the zone.
 

Get somebody else involved
It’s often easier to stay on track when you’ve made a pact with other writers. Form a writing group, or join a workshop, or just identify one friend who also writes and arrange a regular get-together. This could be an hour of silent writing together – the solidarity of having others in the room (or on camera) can be very motivating – or you could agree to read each other’s work once a month and meet up to discuss (combining it with a little treat of a drink or cake). Make it a regular appointment if you can: that will help you to develop a writing routine, which in turn will cement it as a habit, and your procrastination problem will quickly fade away. 

Hattie Crisell is a freelance writer based in London. Her book, In Writing: Conversations on Inspiration, Perspiration and Creative Desperation, was published by Granta Books in November 2024. Since 2019 she has produced and hosted the podcast In Writing with Hattie Crisell, interviewing writers of all kinds in their studies.

She is a contributing editor of Grazia magazine and has written for The Times, Bustle, Elle, Vogue, You, The Telegraph and The Evening Standard, among others.