Top Three Writing Excuses
And the Root Cause of Each
True story: I just closed about 100 browser windows because I need to concentrate on writing this. How is that for a writing excuse? Today in Shelf Life, top 100 writing excuses: They are all browser windows. It’s just browsers all the way down. I’ve actually had this topic lined up for several weeks so it’s mere coincidence that I spent yesterday and today procrastinating and making excuses for why I couldn’t work on Shelf Life right then. Sometimes the stars all line up like this.
Not everybody makes writing excuses. I know some people who only stop writing to eat, sleep, and go to their day job. Those folks may still find some useful tidbits in today’s Shelf Life but they are not the ones at whom this particular article is aimed. There are a lot of people who want to write but find they just don’t sit down to do it—ever, or as often as they’d like. I’m a part of this group of people. I write but not as much as I would like to.
Sometimes the reason I don’t sit down and write is because I’m distracted. At some point I’m going to write a companion article to this one, about writing distractions. This one is not about distractions. This one is about excuses: The reasons we give ourselves to not write—or undertake any creative pursuit, really.
I make these kinds of excuses. I know this is not just a “me” problem; I’ll tell you how I know. I thought of a way to force myself to sit down and write, on a regular basis, no excuses. It literally works every time. I created a writing group that meets at my house. The trick is, it is not a critique group. It’s a group for other writers to come hang out quietly and eat some snacks and write for a couple of hours. That’s how I know this problem isn’t just a Catherine idiosyncrasy: I had takers. Then I had more takers who weren’t local so I started a virtual component. New members come along periodically, to both groups.
Clearly, there’s an appetite for this peer-pressure approach.
This group setting works well because there’s nothing to do while you’re at the group but sit there and write. Plus, we check in every 25 minutes or so to see how it’s going for everyone, and nobody wants to be the person who confesses to having scrolled through social media the whole time. There is no opportunity to make excuses and no opportunity to get distracted. It is a bulletproof format.
I will make every excuse imaginable to not go to the gym. It’s too hot. It’s too cold. I’m too busy. I’m too lazy. I’m too tired. I have too much motivation, but for something else. My gym clothes are dirty. The gym smells weird. I will make any excuse under the sun to avoid the gym but once I am at the gym I don’t actually mind being there. Like once I am on the machine I’m fine. Any moment prior to getting on the machine, I might still flake out. I once drove to the gym then turned around and drove home without going inside. My therapist at the time thought they had found a CBT miracle cure for this avoidance behavior and they were like, “You don’t have to go in the gym, just put on your gym clothes and go to the gym. Because you’re not going to get ready and drive there and then not work out!” Shows what they know.
Some of the excuses we make to avoid things are real, but many are smoke screens for the real reason we avoid something. It was never too hot or too cold, my gym clothes never too dirty, to go to the gym. I was avoiding the gym for other reasons that I didn’t want to think about too hard and frankly still don’t, so never mind. At some point I had to acknowledge that I really just hate the gym and I get my exercise other ways now.
For today’s Shelf Life, I’m going to call out three excuses people give for not doing things—writing among them—and then I’m going to go a bit into what I believe is the root cause of making that particular excuse. As you read, these may ring true for you or maybe they won’t. For instance, I’ll talk about what I believe is a most common root cause behind the excuse “I’m too busy” when we know we are not, in fact, too busy. You may read that and disagree: “No, that’s not true for me. I’m genuinely too busy.” That’s fine. I’m not armchair diagnosing anyone. I only suggest, if you find yourself using any one of the excuses below to avoid a creative pursuit and you suspect there might be more to your avoidance, then consider the whether the common root cause might be lurking in your mind somewhere.
1. I’m Too Busy
I will go ahead and put this one first since it’s everyone’s favorite excuse and since I just mentioned it. Sometimes we really are too busy to make time for writing. I’ve said this in Shelf Life before but it is always worth repeating: Not everyone has “the same twenty-four hours in a day.” That is an empty platitude and incorrect. Yes, each day is technically twenty-four hours long. No, each person’s twenty-four hours are not the same. In fact, I’m willing to suggest that every person’s available twenty-four hours are completely different based on differences in:
Employment situation
Caregiving responsibilities
Sleep requirement
Energy level
The twenty-four hours in a day are used very differently by a person who works and cares for children or elders versus a person who does not have employment or caregiving responsibilities. All other things being equal, a person with a disability may not expect the same “productivity” from their twenty-four hours as a person without a disability.
Unless someone uses writing to produce income, most of us have to fit it into our non-work, non-sleep hours where we also have to fit in stuff like grocery shopping, mailing birthday cards, walking the dogs, going to the doctor, cleaning our clothes, taking a shower—and so on. The amount of unstructured, available time to do with as we please varies from person to person and some people simply do not have any. This is a reality.
That acknowledged, sometimes “I’m too busy” actually means “I feel guilty when I take time to do what I want to do.” This feeling of guilt comes from a number of sources but I recognize two really big ones:
First, the belief that we should spend time on everyone else (family, friends, neighbors, et cetera) before spending time on ourself. This is more likely to affect women and femme-presenting people, who are more likely to have been socialized to be nurturers or caregivers. This has the same root as spending money on “the kids” but not on oneself. There is social pressure to put others first, and keep putting others first, until there’s no time, money, or energy left.
Second, we live in a rapidly disintegrating late-stage capitalist hellhole, in which earning income is the supreme goal and anything that can’t be turned into “a hustle” is unproductive, wasted time. If your writing isn’t earning money—and it may never earn money!—then why do it? What’s the point in doing something you can’t turn into income?
Either way, “I’m too busy” can be a smokescreen for “I will feel guilty if I take time to use for my writing instead of doing something for others or earning money.”
Listen: You have to put your own oxygen mask on before you can help anybody else. This goes for both of the beliefs above—the earning money one, too. It’s okay to have something for yourself, that you enjoy doing and that fulfills your need to be creative. If you wreck your mental health by consistently putting everyone else before yourself, or putting money ahead of your other needs, then you won’t be available to the people who count on you or to your employer.
(Note: Your employer does not count on you. Your employer would get a new you next week if you feel over dead today.)
2. I’m Not Good at It
“I’m not good at” (name of creative pursuit or other activity here) is in the same neighborhood as, “I don’t have any ideas” and “I dislike receiving peer critiques/reader reviews”: These excuses come directly from the fear of being judged. They do not pass go and do not collect $200.
Unpack the excuse I’m not good at it. Nobody is good at anything when they start. Human beings are born knowing how to suck and cry and that’s literally it. Everything else is learned. Everything else has to be built up through study and experience. Everything. Nobody is good at writing unless they practice writing. And, specifically, the type of writing one wants to do requires practice. You can’t practice writing fiction by sending business emails or creating technical documentation.
It makes no sense to avoid doing something because you’re not good at it; doing it is how you become good at it. It’s the only way to become good. The avoidance behavior is actually coming from the fear of judgment, criticism, or rejection. If writing is bad, it’s just bad. The words are on a page and nobody can know if that writing is bad unless the writer shares that writing. Even if your writing were bad, the existence of bad writing is harmless. What do we actually think will happen as a consequence of bad writing?
Readers will leave a bad review.
Agents will ignore my query.
The magazine I submitted to will reject me.
My critique group will make fun of me.
My editor will leave me a lot of red markup.
I get it. We all hate red markup. Fun fact: When I used to occasionally proofread for authors directly (that is, not with a publisher as intermediary) I would use a green checking pencil instead of red because I think it’s less anxiety-producing for authors. Under many guidelines and style manuals, green or red pencils are both acceptable for proofreading.
If you find yourself making this excuse, squash it by reminding yourself that:
You’ll never become good at it if you don’t do it; and
Nobody has to see that writing but you.
3. I Don’t Feel Inspired
Does this sound familiar? “I wait for inspiration to strike.” What about, “I can only write if I feel motivated”? Or, “I want to write, but I don’t enjoy the process.” All of these come from: Inertia.
Inertia is the principle that an object will continue on its current trajectory unless some outside force acts upon it. An object in motion remains in motion unless something stops it (this includes friction); an object at rest remains at rest unless something starts it moving.
If you don’t currently have a writing habit—or a habit of doing whatever thing it is you want to do, creative or otherwise—then you will remain on that trajectory unless something happens to change your trajectory. Conversely, someone who has a writing habit (or any habit) is likely to remain on that trajectory—that is, they are likely to continue in their habit—unless something happens to cause a change.
Importantly, this includes friction. In a vacuum, an object in motion could stay in motion forever. On Earth, there’s gravity pushing the object against the surface below it, which generates friction, which slows the object over time and will eventually stop it if there is no force propelling the object to keep it in motion. Habits can degrade over time from friction, too. I think we’ve all probably had something that was a habit that we didn’t keep up and over time we did the thing less and less, and eventually stopped. Like me with the gym.
I’m emphasizing this because just creating a habit isn’t enough to keep you on a forward-moving trajectory forever. Life provides friction, and you do have to keep putting in some propulsion to keep moving. That said, it’s much easier to stay in motion than to create motion when you are still.
If you make any excuse that boils down to “I just don’t feel like writing,” ask yourself: “Do I write often?” If the answer is “no,” that’s inertia talking. You don’t feel like writing because you don’t write. You need to start writing and do it regularly to cultivate “feeling like” writing.
If the answer to “Do I write often?” is yes, perhaps you’d just enjoy a brief break from your writing routine—or perhaps friction is decaying your forward momentum. Make a plan for your break so you know exactly when you’ll get back to your routine. If you have an excuse to delay resuming, then you’re definitely losing momentum. Push past the friction and stay in motion.
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