How Not to Write Your Book
...seventeen avoidant exercises
Years ago a woman called me saying she was ready to write her book. We had an appointment to speak, and when the time came to talk, she texted me - I’m so sorry I have to cancel, I’m headed to San Diego to pick up a puppy.
Today I thought of 17 additional ways you can avoid writing your book:
Tell everyone you are writing a book
Scroll on social media
Pay the monthly You Tube fee
Make memes
Declare you are a writer
Drive to San Diego to pick up a puppy
Make a baby
Have the baby
Sit in a coffee shop with your laptop open
Don’t hire an editor
Fire your editor
Fall in love with your first draft
Fall in love
Don’t read poetry
Sit on Laura’s Lanai
Eat
Ask AI to write it for you
Start a Substack
Laura Lentz is the founder of LITerati Academy, an international community of writers creating together every week, the author of a writer’s workbook based on the Hero’s Journey - STORYquest, the Writer, the Hero, the Journey, and the essay book Freeing the Turkeys. She can be found on coffee shops on Kauai falling in love with the first draft of her upcoming book Broken Buddhas and Diamond Days.
In addition to about half of your list, these are all reasons that I've used over 20 years...
Move cross country...or cross State...every few years. It's a good way to avoid writing for 4 - 6 months.
Take up a new musical instrument.
Enroll in another personal growth course that you won't finish. (It will occupy your mind with guilt for not completing another thing.)
Follow your research down a never-ending rabbit hole.
Listen to the bully in your head when it tells you no one will want to read your book.
Research another idea for another book.
Sabotage your income so your mind is too worried to focus on writing.
Compare your writing to anyone else who has written on your subject.
Break a bone.
Attempt to go back and fix long-lost relationships.
Pay for the book to be published before you are sure what you are writing about.
Hmmmm....
This is a good practice in awareness. I am in awe of this list that has held me back.
Awareness is a good thing.
Love this Laura, thanks; couldn’t help but add some of my own:
18. Feel a moment of inspiration and then loose your words.
19. Carry around your rough draft of 220 pages for ten years and counting
20. Start painting instead of writing
21. Globe too frustrated with tech to move forward
22. Don’t read
23. Play stupid words with games over and over waiting for the bot to play back
24. Buy more plants
25. Move every 1 1/2 years
26. Feel that you can’t form a complete sentence, let alone paragraph that makes any sense at all
27. Regret not knowing how to take care of yourself
28. Try to save the world
29. Try to save your wife
30. Try to save yourself instead of just writing
31. Complain about the heat or air or not the perfect place to write
32. Complain about anything
33. Keep saying it is just not the right time yet, I guess
34. Keep guessing
35. Go on and on and on instead of not writing