5 Simple Steps to Avoid Becoming a Writer

So, there’s a writer inside you and he’s already sowing the seeds of a best-seller in your brain. Your inner-writer’s urge to write that story is overwhelming. Night and day, he nags you to let him write. You fear that it may only be a matter of time before you have to quit your miserable office job that you love and become a professional author instead – all because you couldn’t silence the voice in your head which said ‘Let me write!’. Because the urge – no, the need – to write is so powerful, you know you’ll never be able to simply ignore it.

All you can hope to do is keep your inner-writer at bay by pacifying him with false promises of writing. So if you want to make sure that best-seller of yours never makes it to the first draft stage (never mind the best-seller shelf!), here’s a few simple steps you can follow.

1 – Find New Writing Equipment

Remember, the trick is to make your inner-writer feel good about himself without ever letting him do any writing, so set aside your manuscript (‘just for a second’) and fire up your preferred app store or shopping website and start hunting for new equipment or software that might help you to become a better writer.

The reason this is such an effective means of dodging that completed manuscript is simple: it feels like you’re helping your inner-writer to accomplish his goals when in fact you are simply wasting his time. Because there are so many resources you can spend your time perusing, you can easily spend your entire day doing it instead of actually writing. The obvious thing to look for is new software that you can write your novel with (or perhaps some nice new stationary, if that’s how you roll); perhaps something that allows you to organise your notes and drafts in a particular fashion, or perhaps you would prefer to look for an app like the Hemingway Editor which marks your writing style for you.

2 – Study Your Craft

The only danger with the previous step is that if you do happen to find the perfect writing software (i.e., Scrivener), your inner-writer will insist you buy it and then let him start writing his novel with it!

If this happens, quickly appeal to your inner-writer’s sense of vanity. It is his greatest weakness! Tell him you want to make sure he writes to his fullest potential… and to do that, he must learn all about the art of writing before he can write in a way which does justice to his natural genius.

The internet is your best friend to this end. With just a few well-phrased search terms, you will soon find that you’re absorbing the wisdom of writers and writing-coaches from all the four corners of the world. The more you read, the more excited your inner-writer will become about how great a writer he is going to be – not realising that hours may have passed without a single word of fiction actually being written by you.

3 – Figure Out Whether You’re a Planner or Not

So, you’ve got your brand spanking new notepads, pens, writing software, chair and everything else you need to write and you’ve finished reading up on how to be a writer (not that you’ll ever truly read everything the internet has to offer!). Suddenly you’re struck with a horrifying thought:

I have no more excuses not to write!

But don’t give up! You still have a chance to kill time. Remember what the internet taught you about planning your novel: that some people naturally need a plan to write successfully and others naturally do better without a plan. So, waste a bit more time trying to figure out which applies to you…

4 – …Then Plan/Do Not Plan Accordingly

If you have decided that you are a planner, then plan. Plan, plan and plan some more. Plan until you are up to your nose-hair in character profiles, chapter layouts, back stories, mind-maps, doodles and whatever else you can think of to refine your story without actually writing a line of narrative. If you’re struggling a bit, get back on the internet and research your subject. Is your antagonist a pirate? Then be sure to research everything the internet has to offer on piracy and don’t stop refining that antagonist’s profile until he accurately reflects all the facts you’ve learned. Plan until there’s not so much as a hint of a rough edge left anywhere in your story. I can guarantee that you will never actually start a draft.

If, however, you have decided that you’re not a planner, then write without a plan. Remember all that stuff I said last week about knowing what your story is about? Forget I said it. Write fifty odd chapters, or more if you can manage it! Then, when you finally realise that your story can proceed no further, spend a few weeks or months feeling dejected. Repeat this process as many  times as required until you finally give up.

5 – Tell Everyone About the Great Novel You’re Writing

If, by some miracle, you have actually managed to complete all of the above steps and you still have a little time left over to write your novel then stop.

You’ve already got your new writing software. You already know how to craft and structure the perfect novel (and have the jargon to prove it!). You have completed all the planning you need. Your inner-writer probably feels pretty smug about the fact that he is ready to write a killer novel and still has a few spare hours to do it. Your last hope is for you to tell all your Facebook friends and Twitter followers all about the exciting story you’re writing. Perhaps even post a little excerpt to demonstrate to everyone what a truly splendid writer you are and maybe get them to critique it for you.

While you’re here, have a look and see what everyone else is up to on the internet, especially other writers. There’s nothing your inner-writer likes more than to feel like he is a contemporary of your favourite published authors. This is also a good place to look at up writer’s memes, or something along those lines. This will make your inner-writer feel good about himself, because he gets all the jokes that include literature jargon about narrative voice and what-not.

These five steps should be more than sufficient to waste every precious minute of your inner-writer’s writing time. So long as you’re procrastinating, you’re not writing and if you’re not writing, you’re not a writer. If you find you still have time to write then I can only conclude that you are simply not procrastinating hard enough and are spending far too much time writing your story. I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this but if you find yourself in that position then I fear that you may, finally, be a writer.