The Second Act Author is my video series dedicated to helping writers in their “second act” — fifty, sixty, seventy, eighty years or older — bring their writing to fruition, to market, and to an audience. Watch the video or, if you prefer, read the article adapted from the video content.
This episode of The Second Act Author is based, in part, on my Scribtotum article “Writers, Stop Not Starting! Understanding and Beating Procrastination”
You’re in your second act. You’re past 50, 60, 70, maybe past 80 years old. It should be the perfect time to write that thing you’ve waited, maybe your whole life, to write. Some responsibilities may have eased up. Maybe the kids are grown, or they’ve even left the nest. Maybe a lot of your time has been taken up by caring for elderly parents, but sadly, maybe they’re gone now. Maybe you’re even retired or heading toward retirement.
It’s the time in your life when there should be more opportunities to write.
And yet, you find yourself filling that time with things that are, well, let’s call them writing adjacent. Gathering interesting facts that maybe could possibly fit into that thing you’re writing. Character studies. Maybe it’s world building. Maybe you’re even traveling to the locations in your still unfinished (maybe never started!) book.
These are acts of creativity, and they certainly scratch the creative itch. But they don’t add words to your manuscript. They don’t let you get any closer to saying, “This is done.”
Sure, some of that stuff is necessary, but if that’s all you’re doing, and the days and the weeks and maybe the years are drifting by, never to return, why do we do it? Why do we procrastinate?
Procrastination is Often a Symptom of Fear
You might not feel afraid, but here’s what’s happening:
You’ve probably been thinking about starting or finishing a book for years or decades. Actually doing it means a change of identity from someone who thinks about writing to someone who is writing.
That opens up a whole can of worms, because once you are someone who is writing, well, then that means eventually there’s a good chance you’re going to be someone who has finished something you’ve written.
And once you’ve finished that thing that has only been an aspiration most of your life, you probably want to put it out into the world.
And that opens you up to another scary thing: judgment.
What if you’ve been waiting your entire life to do this monumental thing and… nobody appreciates or understands it? What if nobody reads it?
That’s kind of terrifying, right?
What about the other end of the spectrum?
What if your writing is successful? How is that going to change your life?
We get up into our 50s, your 60s, 70s, 80s… we get used to things being the way they are. To have that apple cart upset, even in an exciting and positive way… that’s disruptive, and carries all kinds of unknowns.
That’s scary.
Your Over-Protective Brain
All your subconscious mind wants to do is make sure you’re safe. But your brain doesn’t really understand the difference between an actual danger and an existential threat like failure, change, rejection, or a break with the status quo.
To your brain, it’s just uncertainty, and that might mean danger, and danger is bad. So, we do whatever necessary to avoid the bad thing. We do anything but the very thing that could lead us closer to the metaphorical lion possibly hiding in the tall grass.
Instead of writing manuscript words that might someday lead to typing “The End” and printing that bad boy out, we do a little more research, or figure out how many months it rains in the Kingdom of Gobbledygook. We work out our heroine’s family tree to six generations. We write a detailed description of the coffee shop where a scene takes place that, so far, really only lives in your head.
We scroll through our phone and take screenshots of actors who might kind of sort of maybe look like the characters in our unwritten stories. We mock up covers (I’ve done this!) for books we haven’t even started writing.
All these things, they all scratch the itch. They’re all versions of creativity; of accomplishment.
But they’re really just shadows of the thing you actually want to do.
The Procrastin-Action Trap
I am as guilty as anyone when it comes to this. I’m an expert at the art of what I like to call procrastin-action, which is when you’re doing something, but you’re not really doing the thing that truly fulfills you.
I don’t know about you, but when all I’ve done is procrastin-action for a while, I start to feel frustrated, and anxious. I get short-tempered and impatient. I even have recurring dreams full of personal symbols that represent the fact that I’m ignoring my creative aspirations; not exercising my creative muscles.
It took many years to write my first novel. Since then, I’ve published two more novels with almost exactly seven years between them. That’s frustrating, because the math is clear: if I stick to that schedule, there’s not going to be enough time to write all the things I truly want to write.
At least part of the reason it’s so long between novel-length works is my inclination toward procrastin-action.
If I’m not really, truly working toward my creative writing goals, I don’t feel like my true self. Maybe it’s the same for you.
Strategies for a Creative Writing Life
So, how do we stop not starting? How do we build a creative writing practice in our lives so our brains are convinced we’re headed toward fulfillment and contentment and peace, not danger?
I’ve got some ideas about a structure. I don’t every element will work for everyone, but some combination should work for you.
The 90 Day Commitment
No matter how many of these things you adopt, I want you to work at it, consistently, for a consecutive 90 days.
90 days is long enough to accomplish tangible results, but short enough to be easy to imagine.
As I write this, it’s October 14th. 90 days from now is the beginning of next year. There’s Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s Day, and then about two weeks after that is the end of those 90 days. It’s literally the foreseeable future, and that makes it easier to keep the goal in sight: establishing a consistent, persistent creative writing practice.
It’s not long enough for a bunch of unknown anxiety-generating variables to creep in. It’s not the void of a whole year, or even six months.
So as you think about these strategies, consider sticking with whichever ones you choose for a solid 90 days.
Set Realistic Goals
Set goals for yourself that aren’t so high that you never actually start. You don’t want to self-sabotage by setting yourself up for something you clearly can’t accomplish due to logistics, available time; things like that.
Accountability
If at all possible, get yourself an accountability buddy. They don’t necessarily need to also be creating a writing practice, just someone you can trust to check in with you periodically and keep you on target.
For an accountability buddy to have any power, there have to be consequences… but I’m not advocating for negative consequences. Some recommend things like, “If I don’t write X number of words before this date or that date, my friend will donate $100 of my money to some cause that I hate.”
No. No negative consequences. We don’t tap a dog on the snout with a rolled-up newspaper anymore, do we?
Instead, establish positive incentives: whatever reward will give you a little burst of happiness when you reach different stages of your goal. It could be something as silly as your accountability buddy buying you a cup of coffee. Whatever.
Having an accountability buddy puts some of the pressure outside of yourself because, let’s face it, we can be very lenient with ourselves. We can come up with all kinds of excuses. We can lie to ourselves.
Somebody other than yourself keeping you, quite literally, honest and on the path, can be very effective.
Environment Design (A Two-Parter)
Next up is designing not just your physical environment, but your circumstantial and behavioral environment.
There are some very nearly frictionless sources of distraction in most of our lives: Mobile games and social networks are a couple big obvious ones, right? Maybe it’s time to uninstall social networks from your phone, or the computer where you do your writing.
Maybe both, although honestly, I wouldn’t recommend it. Utterly denying yourself of something is just another negative consequence. You don’t want to feel like you’re denying yourself in order to write. You want to feel like you’re streamlining your life to have fewer distractions from writing.
Also, you probably have a few things you do automatically every single day that are just time and space fillers. As an example, during my morning coffee I usually read through blogs I’m subscribed to… which often devolves into clicking over to social networks, filling my brain with other people’s thoughts.
If you do anything similar, instead let yourself have your own thoughts during those idle times. Avoid filling up on outside stimuli. Just let yourself be with yourself and see where your brain might go.
No this isn’t directly related to actually writing. It’s about creating a mindspace you’re comfortable with. Ideally, you eventually look forward to being your own best company, because you need to be in your head when you’re writing. Instead of looking for those outside voices, allow yourself to just think; daydream; brainstorm.
An Information Diet
One of those ways we procrastinate is with research and information collection. Maybe it’s directly related to our story or to the tools we think we need, or figuring out marketing for the book that isn’t even begun.
During those 90 days, my recommendation is, again, not to completely stop taking in new information, because that’s a negative consequence, right? But do go on a bit of an information diet.
You have a question about something that is not immediately pertinent to what you’re doing? Make a note of it and allow yourself a certain amount of time every day or every couple of days to have a dedicated research slot on your calendar, and leave it at that.
Don’t let seeking information keep you from acting on information you already have.
Think of it as like being a sponge. A sponge has two purposes: One is to absorb. The other is to work. We use a sponge to clean, to scrub, to polish. A sponge can be passive, just sitting there soaking up stuff, but in the right hands, a sponge is an instrument of positive change.
It’s time to stop absorbing for these 90 days and start working.
Themed Days
The fifth strategy may be right for you if you already have a fairly structured life: assigning specific days of the week to specific activities or types of activities. This reduces friction and decision fatigue.
As an example, for a little while I lived like this:
- Sunday: housekeeping and planning the rest of the week.
- Monday: promotion and creating content.
- Tuesday and Wednesday: for client work.
- Thursday: actively writing on whatever writing project was on deck.
- Friday: maintenance, health, or the car, or fixing things around the house, whatever, and for running errands.
- Saturday: true rest, my interpretation being that’s a day I don’t do any work for anyone else.
In keeping with my recommendation to not go 100% on anything, keep in mind all of these activities aren’t the only thing done on that day, but rather the primary focus of the time and energy you invest that day.
Sunday is for housekeeping and for planning, for example, but that doesn’t mean if all the housekeeping and planning is done, I couldn’t do a little writing. In fact, if there’s open time on any of those days, if at all possible, spend it writing.
And I know, writing is, you know, it’s physically and mentally exhausting, so I’m not recommending actively writing from when you wake up till you go to bed. If you go for an hour or two, later in the day, if you can, sit down and put in another session.
The main point is each of these days are for these things. If Thursday is the day that you’re supposed to be actively writing and you haven’t actively written that day, then you’re not going to clean the house or run errands, because there are other days for those things.
Pick and Choose
Once again: I don’t suggest that you try to adopt every one of these strategies. That can lead to overwhelm, to a sense that you’ve set yourself up for too much. “Don’t set unreasonable goals.” But I bet there’re one or two or three you can fit into your life, or, you can arrange your life so that they do fit.
Doesn’t matter which one of these you do, so long as you do a few, and you commit to doing them for a straight consecutive 90 days.
An Accountability Community
I have just as much trouble as you sticking to and honoring my creative practice as anyone, so let’s do this: If I hear from at least 10 people who can commit to the 90-day thing, I’ll set up a little community here where, every week, we’ll get together in a live chat and just… check in with each other.
Because it’ll be a community, it’ll be available for folks to talk about this stuff throughout the week, as well.
If that’s something of interest to you, let me know you’re down with committing to building a creative practice for 90 consecutive days. As soon as I get 10 people on that intention list, I’ll set it up and we’ll do it.
The Biggest Reason to Stop Not Starting
I’ve saved the biggest reason for the end.
It’s probably the most obvious reason, but that doesn’t mean we give it the attention it deserves. Because remember, our brains don’t like things that are kind of scary.
Remember that we must die.
There’s only so much time to be alive, and that means there’s even less time to spend writing and finishing your stories and getting them out there in the world.
What’s more important to you? Doom scrolling? Watching funny videos? Working out the details of your story world down to the most granular and ultimately probably meaningless degree?
Or writing the story that only you can tell? Getting it out of your head and into a tangible form so other people can experience it?
If the former, well, all I can say is, good luck, and maybe The Second Act Author is not for you.
If the latter, then get to building that creative writing practice. Pick some of those strategies. Declare your intention with me.
There’s only so much time, and when you and I are gone, whatever stories we have not told, whatever stories we haven’t finished, we haven’t shared, they’re gone forever.
If you’ve seen my video on why it’s OK to write when the world is on fire, or my other video about your second act writerly secret weapon, you know I believe we have a responsibility to the world and to culture to tell the stories that only we can tell.
So. It really is time to stop not starting and build your creative writing practice.
