12 Week Year for Writers
The 12 Week Year for Writers podcast is hosted by Trevor Thrall, Ph.D., author of The 12 Week Year for Writers. We dive deep on strategies and tools to help writers be their most productive selves.
12 Week Year for Writers
The Productivity Killer: Understanding—and Overcoming—Procrastination
Procrastination afflicts even the most talented and ambitious writers. That half-finished manuscript, the brilliant idea gathering dust, the writing project continually pushed to tomorrow—we all know the struggle. In this candid exploration, Trevor Thrall dives deep into the psychology behind why writers procrastinate and offers battle-tested strategies to overcome this creativity-killing habit.
Drawing from personal experience and years of coaching writers, Trevor unpacks the surprising emotional roots of procrastination. Fear sits at the heart of many writing delays—fear of failure, fear of criticism, and sometimes even fear of success. For perfectionists, the terror of creating something imperfect can be paralyzing. As Trevor explains, "The most perfect book is the book you never start, because you never have to sully that book's perfection with reality." This insight alone might explain why so many aspiring authors talk about writing for years without typing a single word.
Beyond fear, Trevor examines how overwhelm, imposter syndrome, and lack of accountability contribute to our procrastination habits. He dismantles the common excuse of "poor time management," revealing that what appears as a scheduling issue often masks deeper emotional barriers. The conversation shifts from diagnosis to remedy as Trevor outlines a comprehensive system for establishing a sustainable writing practice. At its core: connecting your writing to a compelling life vision, breaking projects into manageable chunks, establishing consistent routines, and creating meaningful accountability.
Ready to transform your writing life? Trevor offers practical tactics like the "zero draft" approach (lowering quality expectations to get a complete draft quickly) and the "fail early, fail often" strategy of sharing your work throughout the creative process. Whether you're wrestling with a dissertation, struggling with your first novel, or finding it difficult to maintain momentum on your tenth book, this episode provides the framework to stop procrastinating and start producing your best work. Your writing dreams are waiting—isn't it time to stop putting them off?
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Welcome to the Get your Writing Done Podcast. I'm Trevor Thrall, the author of the 12-Week Year for Writers. If you enjoyed today's episode, please submit a review wherever you get your podcasts and for weekly updates on the podcast and everything you need to get your writing done, you can subscribe to the newsletter and find out what's going on at 12weekyearforwriterscom. That's loveweekyearforwriterscom. Is there something sitting in your sludge pile? Or maybe on a tiny half-forgotten note in your desk, that list of things that you just can't seem to do? Well, if so, you're not alone, and if so, this episode is for you.
Trevor Thrall:Alright, today's a tough topic, folks. Today we talk about procrastination. Why do we all do it? Why should we not do it? What can we do about it? Those are the questions, and you know I'm coming to you as someone with a prodigious history of procrastination. And it's funny because you know there's no permanent solution to the problem of procrastination. I think it's just kind of baked into our DNA. We'll talk about that in a minute. But I have learned over time some ways to wrassle my procrastination to the ground, and so I'm looking forward to sharing some of those thoughts today. So today I just want to talk a little bit first about the causes of procrastination, because I think we need to understand those things before we start attacking it and then share some strategies about how to get things done when you have, maybe now at this point, a habit of procrastinating around your writing. Right, and talk about what we can do to kind of break out of that, okay.
Trevor Thrall:So let's start with why we procrastinate and I think you know, sadly, this is a big problem, in part because there are a lot of reasons for procrastination. Let me just start with one that I know is a big one, because, in fact, just over the last week, I've had conversations with multiple authors and aspiring authors who voiced this very issue, and that is fear. And that fear comes in itself many different flavors. But, you know, for people who are starting on their writing journey, who are aspiring to be a published author, who are maybe working on their first book or something like that, maybe it's a dissertation, something you've never done before there is a lot of fear of failure, right? What if I can't do it? Or what if I write it and it stinks? What if I write it and I don't pass the exam, or I don't get an agent to pick it up, or I don't get a public, an agent, to pick it up, or I don't get it published, or it gets published and no one buys it. These are scary things, man. These are just scary things and you know, understandably they can slow people way down, right.
Trevor Thrall:Another one is fear of success. Sometimes we worry about what's going to happen when we publish something and then people expect us to be this genius author person. You know it's funny. You know, I was so excited to get a PhD and then it turned out that getting a PhD just meant that people thought you knew everything. And that's kind of terrifying because you don't know anything. I mean, you just spent a long time in school. In fact it almost by definition means you know a lot less than most people because you kind of siloed down on one small part of the world.
Trevor Thrall:But increased expectations, right. Especially and the problem is this can strike people who are writing their second, third or fourth book right. You figured out how to do it the first time, but you can procrastinate. What if it's not as good as the first one? What if this time I don't meet the expectations that people now have for me? That can slow you down right, because sitting down to work means confronting those fears, and I think a close relative to these kinds of fears is perfectionism, which causes fear, because perfectionists among us, you know who you are.
Trevor Thrall:You just aren't comfortable letting people see anything that isn't your A-plus work and it's super. Being a perfectionist means you have a very high bar for what A-plus work is. Most people A-plus would be a lot lower of a bar, but for you it's really high. And the idea that you're going to let your baby out into the world right, that can be terrifying for a perfectionist, and you know it's actually, even, I think, harder for a perfectionist because you know what the most perfect book is the book you never even start. And you know it's actually, even, I think, harder for perfectionists because you know what the most perfect book is the book you never even start. And you know why. It's because you never have to sully that book's perfection with reality. That book, never that great idea you had for a story, never has to grapple with the fact that you don't have the right words to bring it to life.
Trevor Thrall:And so for many people I'm going to bet $100 that every person listening to this knows someone who has talked about writing a book forever but has done nothing to start writing it, and one of the reasons for that is this fear of the perfection. Right, it's perfect until it becomes real, and then it's not perfect, and then that's scary. So it's really easy to talk about writing, be enthusiastic about your writing before you do it, but that fear of what's going to happen when I start writing can stop people in their tracks and it can be on your to-do list for a long time. I recently worked with a person who had been wanting to write a particular book for over 10 years and just could not get over the hump, and you know I was very happy that we were able to work together and help him to finally get his book done, and I'll talk a little bit about that in a minute. But this fear can be a huge, huge damper on things.
Trevor Thrall:Okay, so next sort of big piece I think that causes procrastination for us is overwhelm and lack of kind of facility with planning and project chunking. When you are starting a big project and you're listening to this because you are a writer with big dreams writers with small dreams don't listen to podcasts about writing. So you're a writer with big dreams, writers with small dreams. Don't listen to podcasts about writing. So you're a writer with ambitious plans. You've, you know, maybe you've written a ton already and you have plans to write even more, or you are getting started on your journey and trying to figure out how to get moving.
Trevor Thrall:One of the reasons it's easy to delay something like a book it's easy to delay something like a book, a thesis, a script, whatever it might be that's sort of big is that this is a complex project, and complex projects have lots of pieces and parts and sometimes when you sit down it's hard to keep them all straight in your mind. And even when you start writing them down, the ideas kind of slip around on the piece of paper and it's hard to feel like you have a hold on it. And when you get overwhelmed, the natural inclination is to say, well, I'll come back to it. I don't have it right now, I'm gonna come back to it, and so it's really easy, when you feel overwhelmed, to stop right and I think, um, you know, when you're not clear about what to do next, you tend not to do it Right. I guess that's kind of like a one of those sort of iron laws. There should be a name for that law. You know Trevor's law when you don't know what the next step is, you don't take it. There you go, and I think I think that is a pretty significant reason for a lot of procrastination.
Trevor Thrall:I think interestingly, I don't think one of the things that I think people point to a lot for procrastination is poor time management. Oh, I just, you know, I'm bad with time, I don't make enough time, and so I just never seem to quite have enough time so I don't get it done. I think that is almost always a red herring for the next set of things that I think cause procrastination, and those are other emotional and psychological factors. Emotional and psychological factors One of and here and again, I'm covering a lot of ground here because, as I said, the reason for procrastination is many, and I won't hit them all, but I'm hitting some of the ones that I see most often. All right, another one, and this is me, this is me all through school, all the way through school, including grad school, until until I was working on my dissertation, my own project.
Trevor Thrall:One of the key causes for procrastination for many people is low motivation, right? Low motivation, you just don't care, right? It's hard to make yourself do stuff right. I don't care very much about cleaning the house. Those to-dos last forever. You know, I've got house improvement projects on my little to-do file that have been there for literally years and I just find reasons not to get to them. Why Because they're not important? No, because I don't them. Why Because they're not important? No, because I don't want to do them. They're boring or hard and I don't like them. So I don't do them forever.
Trevor Thrall:And here's the funny thing. You wouldn't think that a writer would procrastinate about writing because of low motivation. Because aren't you a writer? Don't you like writing? Don't you want to write? Well, yes and no. Right, yes and no, sure, you want to write in a general sense, right, in a general sense I want to write, but that doesn't mean you want to write just anything, right. And so, like I said, like when I was in school you assigned me a paper. I say I like writing, but I don't want to write the paper you just assigned me. I don't want any of that stuff, right? I don't want to study, I don't want to read books, I don't want to read, I don't want to do any of that stuff.
Trevor Thrall:And when you think about a lot of our work in life, and I'm speaking to a lot of you who are writing for jobs, writing for your profession, right? Not every project is exciting. Sometimes you have to do things you have to write for. For those things, you know, if you're a blogger or a podcaster or whatever, like not everyone can be your favorite episode or your favorite blog or your favorite topic, and when your motivation slows or is low for those things, you're going to find reasons to put it off right. So one of the reasons I think it's so important to connect your vision with your writing projects is this very reason.
Trevor Thrall:Because here's the other thing I found like a lot of people will say, oh, I want to write a book. And then you check in next year and they haven't even. But they laugh when you say, have you started writing that book you mentioned last new year's, they go no, no, no, no. And then you ask them five years later hey, you always talk about writing a book. Are you writing a book? No, I'm not writing a book. And why is that? They say they talk like they want to write. Right, and here's the thing. Here's the thing.
Trevor Thrall:There's a difference between what we say and what we feel Right. Part of our brain says I want to write a book. But what people I think mostly mean when they say that is, I want to have written a book? They don't want to do the work. The work is hard, the work will take a long time, the work will cause sweat and blood and tears. They don't want to do that, they want the outcome, they don't want the process. And so, for many of us, if you find yourself saying I want this, I want this, but you find yourself not doing it over and over and over again, you have to sit down and have a real conversation with yourself. Do you really want to do this, like enough that you're willing to pay the cost, the cost of that commitment? Are you willing to commit to that? Because it turns out that there are many people who simply are not at that point anymore. Right, and I'll give you an interesting example.
Trevor Thrall:About five years ago now, I was running a writing group and the woman joined who had written a novel 20 years before and she joined the group thinking you know what I got to get my mojo back. I haven't written anything since then and everyone's always asking me when are you going to write another book, you know. And she's like I just don't want to be a one-trick pony, I want to write another book. And she joined the writing group and we met every week and week after week after week after week. She would say she was going to do certain things and she never did them. Never did them and I won't go into gory details.
Trevor Thrall:But a wonderful thing happened about six months into this. She showed up to the group and said I had an epiphany. I realized that the reason I'm not writing, I realized that the reason I'm not writing is I don't want to write. She said it was really hard for me to admit this, but I want to do other things with my time right now. I want to spend time with my grandkids, I want to spend time doing this, that and the other thing. I realized I thought I wanted that, but that's not what I want. Other people kind of wanted it a lot and I thought I wanted that, but that's not what I want. Other people kind of wanted it a lot and I thought I wanted it, but I didn't. Inside, deep inside, I don't want to write. And I was so happy for her because she had been trapped in a psychic prison. And so I think it's really interesting because she is not the only person who has spent a lot of time and effort trying to get herself to do something that she actually did not want to do.
Trevor Thrall:And if you are a person who has that relationship with a particular writing project, or maybe just writing in general, maybe it's time to ask yourself do I have prep or procrastination problem because I don't, at root, I don't want to do this writing? That's a really important question to have with yourself, right? So you know it could be to that project or it could be, you know, to the whole project of writing. And the sooner you can find that truth out, have that true conversation with yourself and to get to the bottom of it, the better, right? Because then you can find that truth out, have that true conversation with yourself and to get to the bottom of it, the better, right, because then you can get on doing what you were actually being called to do by the world, right? And I think the thing that's tricky about it is that the world, you know, applauds different kinds of behaviors, and so we think we say we want those things, we want those outcomes. But it's funny.
Trevor Thrall:My wife and I have developed a phrase around this which is I wish I wanted that. I can't want that. I wish I wanted to do that. I wish I was the kind of person who wanted to do the work to do that. But I'm not. So I can't. It will kill me to do that because I'm just not made like that. I can't want it enough, and that's perfectly fair. And the whole art of life, it seems to me, is figuring out what you do want to do and avoid the things you don't want to do. All right, so that's one of the big ones.
Trevor Thrall:Another one that's kind of related to the fear thing is imposter syndrome and I've talked about this before. You know one of the. I had two early students when I was first teaching in a graduate program. Two early master's students, you know were, came through the program and both hit the thesis writing phase at about the same time and they were both super students. They are both doing wonderful things today in their careers, to no surprise. But both of them struggled mightily with writing their thesis and at first they of course didn't tell me they were having any problems, and it was only after months of no communication.
Trevor Thrall:I was like, guys, guys, what's going on? And it turned out that both of them independently, they weren't working together, but both of them were suffering from a terrible bout of imposter syndrome. Neither of them had anyone in their families who'd been to grad school. And they were just like, am I the kind of person who can really do this, like I'm pretending to do this, like I feel like I'm just this is all garbage because I'm just not this person. Whatever, it got so bad for both of them. This is not a good thing about graduate school, right? But and I swear to God, I was not trying to pressure anyone here but one of them lost her voice because she got so stressed out about it, and the other guy, he couldn't go in the basement for months because that's where his computer office was, so he just wouldn't go to the basement, oh man. And so we had to work through and I had to reassure and talk them through this, you know, reassure and talk them through this. And you know, because they had just built up a whole bunch of of like self doubt through this imposter syndrome and they need to overcome that to be able to overcome the procrastination, right, and the funny thing is that they were feeling bad about procrastinating, but that wasn't really the issue.
Trevor Thrall:Procrastination is kind of this big catch all term I'm not doing stuff, but the real problem was not procrastinating, it was imposter syndrome, right. And then I'll say one more thing that I think is a big one, and that is and this is a tricky one to throw in onto this pile, but I think it's because it's more at a tactical level. Some of these other things I've just been talking about are more at the strategic level, but at a tactical level and I said before, sort of at the tactical level I don't think people's complaints about time management are a real argument, because I think when people find time difficult, it's because they have a big reason why they're spending their time somewhere else. That having been said, what I will say is and probably to some extent this is true for the the next topic as well but accountability.
Trevor Thrall:When you commit to doing a task like write a book, you are in order to keep yourself going, moving forward. You need to have some process for holding yourself accountable for continuing to move forward. You know, otherwise nothing will happen and you won't get anywhere and you'll just procrastinate right. You won't do the thing that's next on the list of things to do, and so you have to have a system of kind of keeping yourself accountable. There are lots of ways to hold yourself accountable. The question isn't which one is the right one. The question is what's right for you?
Trevor Thrall:There's literature about what the strongest forms of accountability are, or that's that nailing? Is it internal commitment? Are you one of those people who needs other people to be accountable to, or else you won't do it? That's a whole conversation we can have in and of itself, but I do believe 100% that you can have a strong desire to do something, you can have a good plan, you can have, you know, high motivation, all that stuff, but if you don't have a habit of and a system for holding yourself accountable, it's going to be very difficult for you not to find yourself doing other things when you shouldn't be writing. Because writing is such a quiet sport right, it's the quietest activity on the planet. It never complains, it never gets in your face, it allows everyone else to take precedence, and so if you're not holding yourself accountable to doing that work, it's very easy to lose track and not do it, and, you know, maybe not always because you're trying to avoid stuff. That's hard. You know you've got other hard things that need doing too, but they're always going to be louder than writing, and so if you don't have a system for keeping yourself accountable to the writing specifically, it's going to be hard to get the writing done.
Trevor Thrall:Okay, so those are just, I think, some of the the you know, main reasons that I see on a regular basis for why people just aren't getting things done. Right Stays on the sludge pile, I'm afraid of it, it's too hard, I'm not willing to do it. Um, I, I, you know, uh, yeah, all those things. So now, what is the? What's the problem with that? Like, who cares? Right, no one asks you to write the book. So what does it really matter, right? Well, I think there are actually quite a few costs to procrastinating, right, obviously like the most tactical level.
Trevor Thrall:When you procrastinate, you don't get stuff done, you lose momentum, you are less productive, and if those things matter for your job, that could be bad. If you're doing it for a passion project, though, right, it means a delay of your passion, right, if your dream is to publish a book. I know I have spoken to many, many people over the last year, two years whose dream is to publish something. If you do not keep moving, that dream just keeps being denied, and that's no fun for anyone. But you know what One of the worst things about procrastination is, and I know this from personal experience as a kid who had a very difficult time making himself do homework or term papers.
Trevor Thrall:Even worse back in the day, procrastination is a humongous generator of stress and anxiety. It's terrible, it's just awful. It eats at you. It eats at you all the time. That's the worst thing about it is one project that you're procrastinating on can ruin seven days of the week, right? If you're not getting things done on a regular basis, they can eat at you and that feels very bad and we don't like that. The world is crazy enough as it is. Don't add more stress and anxiety by adding writing to the list of things that are stressing out. Use writing as the escape man, but if your writing turns from an escape into an anxiety producer, guess what's going to happen? You're not going to write, right, it's going to be a loop. That's the worst thing.
Trevor Thrall:If you procrastinate, then you stress about it, then you avoid it because it's stressful, then you never do it. And that would be me with my math homework in eighth grade. Like I stopped doing it for a while. It got more stressful. I started doing worse. I got even more stressful. I avoided it harder. It took me a couple years to dig out of that problem, but anyway, right, so that's bad.
Trevor Thrall:Then let's talk about what it does to the quality of your work. Right, when you work in fits and spurts. Right, because you procrastinated for a long time. Oh, then you have to pull an all-nighter, and I know a bunch of you think you're cool because you did an all-nighter once or twice in college and you got an A anyway, or at least you got a B or something like that. And yeah, that's cute when you're in college, but it doesn't work. When you're writing a novel Doesn't write. When you're trying to write a New York Times bestseller, you got to bring your A game. You bring your A game all the time, and and working in fits and spurts is not conducive to doing your best work at all, at all.
Trevor Thrall:Right, and then let's talk about the spillover effects when you procrastinate on your writing. And this is especially true, of course, if it's something you're doing for money or for professional purposes, right. But if you get out of whack and fall behind on that right, it's going to have an impact on other projects that you're working on, on your work-life balance. You're going to end up having to do crazy things that ruin weekends or other stuff like that right. And the worst you know potential cost of procrastination is you just lose out on the opportunities and you miss the goals. And you, you know, the career that you want, the life that you want, the life that you want, the things that writing can help build for you, are things you don't get right. So the cost of procrastinating is sadly quite high, right? So, okay, that's scary.
Trevor Thrall:Enough of that talk, let's. How do we not procrastinate, though? How do we not procrastinate? Well, well, thankfully, there are probably as many potential strategies for not procrastinating as there are reasons that people procrastinate in the first place, and so the reason I wanted to walk through, kind of, you know, the diagnosis phase first is which of these strategies is going to be most useful to you will depend on what your issue is right. If it's fear, it's going to be one thing. If it's imposter syndrome, it might be another. If it's being overwhelmed, it will be another. If it's accountability. It will be another right. But it won't be any real surprise to you to hear me say that embracing a system of writing for creating a healthy writing routine is probably one of the best antidotes to procrastination that you can have. And it starts from the beginning. So let me just walk you through the system and remind you why it helps against procrastination.
Trevor Thrall:The first step is to craft a compelling vision, to anchor your writing in a compelling vision of your life, like where are you trying to go? How is writing getting you there? And making sure that what you're writing is tied directly to that path, so that you know every time you sit down right, you're moving, bit by bit, closer to the life that you want. That's, that's the kind of motivation you want, right, right. When I finally got through my comprehensive exams in graduate school, I was finally done writing papers for other people on topics that they chose, which I never liked doing and I finally got to write my own book for the first time. I had a blast doing that. It was terrifying, I didn't know what I was doing, but I had a blast doing it. Finally, this was what I was here for Building my own career right, putting my mark on the field, putting my ideas out in the world. That's what I was here for and that kept me going, man, as hard as it was and as bad as I was at it. Man, it would have stopped someone with less motivation than I had I'll tell you what. But I was very enthusiastic and I want you to feel that way about your writing every day. Every day you sit down, you should be thrilled because it's putting you closer to where you really want to be.
Trevor Thrall:So that's one thing. Start with the vision. The second thing is planning. If you are feeling overwhelmed, if you are procrastinating because you don't know what to do next, you need to sit down and plan that thing out. Chunk that, sucker up. Read the workbook on project chunking and figure out how to create tactics using a 12-week plan to lay out the next steps in an organized fashion. Right? If you need help, we can help with that, right? Coaches, mentors, other writers help get feedback on that stuff. Right? Easy money.
Trevor Thrall:Mastering the use of time right, I talked about how time should probably not be a problem, if you know, because that's not usually the real reason, right? But it is also true that, in order to get as much done as we want. We need to be careful in our use of time. So having a clear model, week and time blocking and time boxing efficiently so that we are making the most of our days, very useful for moving forward more quickly. Then a huge one is the fourth piece of the system, which is the weekly writing routine. Right, and here I think this is really where the rubber hits the road for folks right, if you make your writing a routine, by definition what a routine does is it makes something easier and more enjoyable and more rewarding. Right, that's a healthy routine.
Trevor Thrall:And so your goal with the 12-week gear for writer system, right, or any other system that you might be using, is to figure out how to make your writing, is to be strategic and think forward. How can I make my week of writing, how can I structure my life, my week, my writing, so that my writing is easier, more enjoyable and more rewarding? And when you do those things, it's inevitable that you're going to do it. You can listen to other podcasts about the weekly writing routine and stuff to hear more about that process, but doing a weekly review so that you make sure you know what you're about and you got the list of things to do next, so you're not wondering what that is. Every week, scheduling your writing sessions so that you're using time well and you're committing yourself to and holding yourself accountable to go do the writing. Having a plan sorry, having a plan at each session, so you know what you're doing.
Trevor Thrall:Meeting with a weekly writing group right? This is one of the biggest, most easiest hacks you can do to prevent procrastination. Most people, right? It doesn't matter whether you're an internal motivation person or an external motivation person. You will get a huge benefit from a weekly writing group either way. If you're an internal motivation person, you will get a huge benefit from a weekly writing group Either way. If you're an internal motivation person, now you don't necessarily need a writing group to help keep you accountable, but what you will get there is motivation, support, collaboration, feedback all sorts of things that help make you write as best as you can but also give you the encouragement and enthusiasm to amplify your internal accountability. If you're one of those people who really can use external accountability, a writing group is perfect, because knowing that you're going to have to fess up what you did and didn't do last week compared to what you said to your writing group, it keeps a lot of people on track. So a weekly writing group, man, that is a huge, huge killer of procrastination.
Trevor Thrall:I do not know. I have had the benefit over, you know, several decades now, of always having different writing groups in play, and I used, you know, when I was an academic, I had basically a writing group for each article I would be working on. So I would have sometimes as many as three writing groups a week for different projects, and without those meeting weekly, those things never would have gotten done. Period, period end, and not just because, you know, no one was lazy, but it's very easy in a busy life to procrastinate. Very easy, right, because there's a lot to do and things are hard and you're like, well, you know what, I'd rather do the easier thing than the hard thing. So, okay, so it gets pushed off another week, but if you know you're having a meeting, yeah, don't push it off, right. So a weekly writing group, huge for overcoming procrastination.
Trevor Thrall:What else can we talk about here? The fear stuff, right? So this is an interesting one, because I think, if you are finding that fear is blocking you from moving forward, I think there are probably at least three things that you could do. The first thing is that you might talk to a mental health professional, right? Therapy is a fantastic way to grapple with emotional fears of all kinds, and it would absolutely be a great idea if you feel like your fear of failure or criticism or whatever it might be, is really holding you back from sitting down and working or from finishing something. I know a lot of people who I've told this story before, but I know more than one professor who got so upset about criticism and negative reviews that they write things and then they just put them in their desk now and they don't bother trying to publish anymore because they're just so upset by that. Well, that sounds to me like something a professional should probably help with, right and I don't say that like I go to therapy, like you know. This is a good thing to do, so that's one right.
Trevor Thrall:If your fear is sort of more of the garden variety, the kind we're all dealing with, and you know something you feel like, you can work on two other options. One is get a writing group, and what's that writing group going to do? That writing group is going to have all the same fears you do, and one of the best ways to overcome fear of failure, fear of rejection, fear of all of those things, and imposter syndrome to boot, is to talk about it out loud, because this stuff dies and becomes much more right-sized when you talk about it out loud. Because this stuff dies and becomes much more right-sized when you talk about it out loud and you realize everyone's afraid of the same stuff and there's really no alternative to go forward and we can all laugh about being afraid of it, right? I have tons of examples in my life like this where once you finally talk about it, you realize okay, I'm going to be scared of it, but I can handle it.
Trevor Thrall:And then a third option that I find very, very important and I say this as someone who has been an advisor and a mentor and a coach for a very long time is it's very natural again I'll just say it it's very natural to be afraid of things, especially when you're trying a big, hairy new thing. It's totally normal and it's also something that a coach or a professor, an advisor, a mentor can help with immensely. You know they can walk you through the kinds of things that you can do to kind of grapple with those fears. They can tell you stories that will help put things in perspective right, depending on what your particular situation is, and they can tell you their own goofy stories about when they had a problem and this and that, and, believe me, we've all got them right. And so having a coach help you through that, like, coach you through, walk you through it right, that can be, that can be another great way to do it. So I I really recommend any and all of those sort of different options.
Trevor Thrall:I'll say sort of one other one more of a sort of an instrumental strategy that I find really, really very useful, and that is something that I learned about a long time ago when my wife was writing her dissertation, she read a book that introduced me to the idea of the zero draft and the zero draft. The specifics actually don't matter very much, but the zero draft is, as the name suggests, a, a first draft. That's even less than a first draft, but basically you lower the bar of quality to zero. You don't edit all gas, no brakes. You basically write an entire version of the book quickly on an intentionally compressed timeline in order to just get the whole waterfront out there, more like a treatment of the book. This isn't got all the content in it, but it's all the content I can put in it, plus all the signposts for what it's going to be. This section I don't have but's gonna be this and that and maybe just got a bunch of bullet points and some ideas and some free writing and all that sort of stuff.
Trevor Thrall:Uh, if you're afraid of finishing something, writing a zero draft first kind of crushes the fear because all of a sudden you have a finished like you have a complete draft now. Is it a little fraudulent? Yeah, sort of, but it's also complete. And at that point all sorts of amazing things happen. Number one you have the whole thing and now you just have to finish it. It's just polishing at that point it's not making it. The making part was scary, but you just got to the end there real quick and now all it is is finishing A lot easier mentally. The other thing you do is you actually give yourself a chance to make it even better, because it's easier to move things around when you can see all the pieces and all the waterfront rather than trying to figure out.
Trevor Thrall:I'm in chapter three. What do I need to do to make sure it's? You don't know yet. So having the whole thing is great, so so zero draft is kind of a mentality, not just a specific thing, because you can zero draft a chapter, you can zero draft a section, you can zero draft the whole book, you can zero draft. But here's the other thing Don't think of your book as the last chance to write the book, right?
Trevor Thrall:You know, one of the things I was just joking with somebody yesterday about is that old saw that you know, books are never finished, we just abandon them. And you know, I can tell you. I can look at any book I've ever written and say, yep, I can tell you the 23 things I still wish I did with that book, or I need another chapter or whatever. But yeah, you run out of time, you gotta publish these dang things. Um so, so. But but think expressly about books being iterations, right? You? So I'm in lots of like. If it's nonfiction, for example, it can be a first edition. You can write another one, right? And for people who are writing like business books or academic works and stuff like that, you would never publish the very first version of something you wrote anyway. Right? If you're an academic, you're going to take it to conference or two or three or five, and get lots of feedback before you publish it. So you don't have to worry about the first draft. Don't worry. Find ways to take the worry down and the cost of failure down. So take it down by making the zero draft mentality kind of your strategy. I'm going to find low-cost ways to deliver finished product and get feedback Right.
Trevor Thrall:Another and related tactic for dealing with fear in particular, and imposter syndrome I think as well, is a somewhat counterintuitive phrase, which is fail early and fail often. I know I've talked about this before, but for me, you know the imagine two scenarios. One is you write a one sentence description of the book you want to write and you share it with someone. How scared does that feel? Not very scary? Let's say you write 300 pages and you share it with someone for their feedback. How scary is that? Okay, that's very scary, right? So so by fail early and fail often, what we want to do with all kinds of writing, I don't care what kind is is you want to share it as early as possible and as often as possible. The fail early part is a joke. It doesn't necessarily mean there's any failure, but you're going to find out often, right, how's it feeling, how's it looking, how's it looking?
Trevor Thrall:So if you are writing something that's for professional purposes, keep giving it to peers who can tell you hey, is this meeting the bar? Is this meeting the bar, is this good, is this good Right? Or a mentor, or if you're writing fiction, it's a writing group who can give you feedback How's that character, how's this character, how's the plot, how's this Right? And the earlier you share right, the earlier you can be confident to add another block Right. If you share the idea for the book and people go, oh, that'd be kind of cool. And then you expand it a little bit more and here's a little treatment, oh, yeah, well, I really like what you're doing with that. Oh, now you have the confidence to outline the whole thing, and now you have confidence to write right. And each time you get a little more feedback, a little more feedback, so that by the time you publish something, you're not revealing it for the first time to the world. You don't have to be scared. You're actually going to be brimming with confidence because you've gotten tons of positive feedback the whole way.
Trevor Thrall:And I think you know, I think maybe younger people, maybe some of you have a more of a writing in public kind of a mindset because of social media and stuff like that. But but my sense is from talking to people that writers for some reason still are kind of the other way around. They tend towards that lone wolf. They tend towards that I'm going to hide my creativity under a blanket until it's time to reveal it to the world. And you know that's you know romantic and, I guess, cool and all. But frankly it's terrible for your mental health and it's not good for the quality of your work either, because you don't give other people a chance to help you make it great.
Trevor Thrall:So I really recommend sort of that zero draft and fail early, fail often, mentality All right. I don't want to go too long. I'm sure there's more we could say about procrastinating, but I've got other things I need to do and I don't want to procrastinate and get into them. So I hope you enjoyed this episode, hope you got something out of it. Hit me up at Trevor at 12weekyearforwriterscom if you have thoughts or comments or want to share your procrastination journey. And until next time, happy writing.