Procrastisearching

And 5 Signs It's Time to Stop

A few days after Christmas, I turned in a new draft of TELL THEM YOU LIED to my editor, and, at some point very soon, he will send it back to me with line notes. I will work on it for a few weeks, then send it to the copyeditor, who will ready the book to be bound into ARCs. In the meantime, I’ve completed my author questionnaire, updated my social media pages, rewritten my biography, sent in my headshot, voiced my opinion on the cover, and cleaned up my option materials. 

Now, there’s nothing for me to do but wait.

We all know that while you’re waiting, you’re supposed to work on something new. I decided to prepare myself first. I reread Save The Cat Writes a Novel. I got the software. I started outlining my new WIP, something I, as a long-time pantser, have never attempted before starting a new project.

Turns out, I like plotting. Maybe I like it too much. Because, as it turns out, I am capable of spending three months obsessively mapping-out a first act and calling it “research.” 

I went down the rabbit hole, guys.

Photo by Steven Weeks on Unsplash

In the past several months I’ve spent hours on Nameberry, changing and re-changing my characters’ names. Countless more hours looking at maps of the ski town where my first act takes place. I’ve explored restaurant menus, shops on Yelp, even street corners where my characters will meet to chat and argue. I’ve visited art museums. I’ve googled the weather. I’ve been on Zillow, and Redfin, and VRBO. I read a 900-page biography of Rasputin, and several Romanov novels, because I’m interested in the intersection of mystic and con artist. I’ve dipped in and out of yoga books. (Does vinyasa count as research?) I’ve listened to any podcast even tangentially related to my topic. Checked exhibition schedules for DIA: Beacon in the early aughts. Made a calendar. Read press releases and celebrity profiles and a hundred news articles about a crime that happened 40 years ago. For a while, I got into vintage furs.

While this is all good information, maybe even necessary— at some point the research lost all meaning. It became oppressive. I wasn’t writing anything. I wasn’t creating. I was procrastisearching.

Enter a sign from the writing god Jami Attenberg.

Last week, Jami led a Mini #1000words, six days of butt-in-chair (or, in my case, butt-in-bed or butt-on-floor) and writing until you get 1000 words. It might not seem a lot to some, but for me, it was everything. I took the challenge. I stopped dilly-dallying and, finally, began to write my story again, not just think about it.

Thanks to Jami, I now have the bulk of my first act drafted. 

The words aren’t perfect, and there is a shit load of work still to do, but my characters have come to life. My plot points are starting to connect. And most importantly, my mind is buzzing. 

I am excited to write again. 

Five signs you, too, have been procrastisearching:

1. You find yourself shopping online for boots “your character” might wear

2. You know the high and low temperatures in your setting for every month of the year 

3. You keep tweaking the all is lost beat but you haven’t written the first line 

4. You have more than three epigraphs

5. You’ve used command+F to replace your antagonist’s name so many times that you’ve turned your manuscript into a game of Jumble

If you said yes to any of the above, this is your sign to close out of Google and write.