On 'Productive' Procrastination

And what I brought home with me after hiding in a motel for a week to line-edit my novel.

I’ve always wondered if there is such a thing as ‘productive procrastination’ (see: me starting this Substack; hi, btw!), or if it’s just another empty oxymoron I’ve used to self-sooth, a la ‘working vacation’¹ or ‘healthy candy’² .

Lots of smart people who study brains and behavior will also contend that there’s no such thing as multi-tasking, that really when we talk about doing two or more things at once we’re talking about rapidly uni-tasking. I wish you could see the number of tabs open on my browser, the number of browsers open on my desktop, and all the clutter (screenshots, files, folders) saved and scattered across the desktop itself. And this, with my entire fucking phone AND laptop blocked from social media until 5pm!

Why do I live like this? Have I actually created a system, like I tell myself? The tabs my living to do list? When I compulsively click through them instead of writing—never mind doing the action that would allow me to close the tab in question (applying to the residency or not, buying the overpriced blouse³ or not, donating to the baseball team my brother coaches)—is that some sort of back alley form of productivity?

I have tried to become one of those people who wakes at the crack of dawn and writes for two blissful hours after lighting a candle. The crazy part is: It feels within reach!

The week before last, I owed my agent the polished copy of my [debut] novel that will go on sub, um, as soon as THIS Monday. (I am unwell, very sick in my brain cells, feeling crazy, excited and scared to death.) This meant that for the first time in recent memory, I had to, y’know, read the goddamn book I wrote. Could I do this in my home, with my loving husband? Maybe!! But also I needed to not: I needed to go to a hotel and hide and turn my phone off, off, off and just be with these 300 pages.

Just pretend it’s someone else’s book, I told myself. Try not to fiddle with the words, they’ve taken you this far, just experience the story as a stranger might. I even, in a moment of absolute psychosis, told my writing group I’d be leaving my red pen⁴ out of reach (!), as if the physical distance between my manuscript and the editing instrument itself might cause my inner-editor to fuck off and go make itself a mocktail (I am sober).

Note the location of the pen.

Reader, I used my editing pen until it was empty of its ink.

At first I panicked: okay, so the book is bad, very bad, my agent is a liar, my friends have deceived me, there is a horrible conspiracy afoot, because this cannot possibly be the book that is headed out to market, and also I am a very stupid fool. But then, I realized: This was quite literally the first and ONLY time I’d given myself a chance to work with the sentences alone.

Each pass I’d polished as I went, but always with bigger fish to fry: character arcs to wrestle with, scenes to cut or re-arrange, notes to execute, jokes and dialogue to punch up, tracking changes and juggling timelines. As I went, I’d try to stop to strengthen a verb, or remove an unwanted echo. I am physically incapable of writing so much as a text message without considering my punctuation and moving it around like a party planner adjusting the angle of the forks and spoons at every place setting.

But here I finally was, with nothing to do (for now) other than copy-edit. And what an absolute pleasure that became. I put my phone on Airplane mode, no Wi-Fi. I woke and shuffled out to my room’s back patio in the half-light, turned on the outdoor fire pit, made a shitty Keurig coffee, and told myself after one chapter I’d go find breakfast. At the end of each chapter I’d check in: What do you need? A snack? A seltzer? A shower? To jump in the pool? To phone a friend? (Usually seltzer sufficed.)

A slutty little picture of my leg and my book :/

I made each sentence sing for its supper. I weeded excess description, especially around the dialogue. I made a few (delicious) block cuts, whole chunks that were still over-explaining, or filled with epiphanies that no longer felt true or necessary. I discovered that for some reason my characters were constantly smiling and laughing (my book is about the surviving family of a serial killer, btw), as if I needed to prove to the reader that they were OK (they’re not); I cut all the gratuitous laughter and smiles.

I made it through the paper read/edit in two very long, hyper-focused days. Then, I started putting my changes into the manuscript itself. It was a little sad to be back in front of the screen, a lot more tempting to distract myself (I became militant with full-screening my GoogleDocs!), but I found a flow. I extended the trip another night. I was furious when it was over, I had been exalted in my little editing hideaway—four-ish perfect days. But all good and productive things must come to an end.

I’ve still kept my phone on airplane mode from the time I go to sleep until at LEAST I’ve crawled out of bed and put my coffee on. No more phone in bed!!, I’ve begged myself for years. The power of this ‘working vacation’ made this goal possible—I taught myself how helpful and wonderful it felt to wake up and begin each day without teleporting into the matrix of texts from the east coast (I love you guys) and emails from brands that, once read, usually knock me back to sleep for another 1-2hrs.

But here I am, two weeks later, four days back from a phenomenally fun Bachelorette Party to Dollywood, and my focus hanging on by a thread. I’d hoped and planned for myself to power through the first draft of my second novel (which has waited patiently in second position for over a year now, with about 15k words and an ever-changing outline to say for itself as I toggle my fiction focus—to say nothing of my day job as a TV writer). I plan to follow all best advice on how to survive going out on sub: turning your focus toward something new, the next thing.

And yet I can’t. Not totally. So I’ve spent the week in a suspended state of productive procrastination: in awe of the access Substack has given me to some of my favorite contemporary authors, literary rockstars and geniuses like Catherine Lacey and Elif Batuman and Ottessa Moshfegh and Garth Greenwell, and I’ve been subscribing to these folks and other inspiring writer-helping Substacks like crazy (Jami Attenberg, Courtney Maum, Jane Friedman), and working through their back catalogues of invaluable advice, getting inspired, getting ready both for the publishing journey ahead (fingers crossed!) and the return of the momentum I’ll need to bring novel two to completion.

Will you be my literal first subscriber? As of this writing, there’s still a chance!

PS: I’m teaching a two day Adaptation Intensive with Writing Workshops on May 16th and 17th. Take a look if you want to talk all things books and short stories to film and TV and back again. Thanks for reading.

Now I think I need a seltzer and a shower,

Dan

1. Which is it? Are you working, or on vacation? (My husband, for one, would really like to know.)

2. SmartSweets or similar—these waxy, stick-to-your-teeth low/no sugar candies that I’ve become incapable of walking through an airport without buying for close to ten dollars.

3. Unfortunately, a gift-card to Bode has come into my possession that has turned me into a part-time employee at the online shop, opening tabs and checking inventory day and night, so disturbed by the exorbitant prices of the clothing I’ve been more stressed about the decision of what to purchase than I was choosing where to go to college.

4. I actually usually edit with a green pen, which I find to be less violent. Y’know: a green light versus a red light (cc: Matthew McConaughey)