Progrestinating.

Maybe that word doesn’t make much sense to you, but it always makes me chuckle. It’s a portmanteau of “progress” and “procrastinating.” Basically, I made it up to mean that you made more progress by procrastinating than if you would have done it when you first thought of it or were told to do it.

I initially credited it’s invention to a character in my middle grade fantasy series Martina Mackenzie who is funny and was trying to get away with cutting the grass for his family once every two weeks instead of every week. Same job in half the time. Thus the progress by waiting.

So how does this apply to book writing?

Do you remember when you first got the writing bug? Maybe the first time someone said, “Wow, you need to write a book!” Or the first time you saw someone big in your industry announce their book launch.

How long ago was that? A month? A year? A decade?

Now, let’s look at how you feel about NOT having a book yourself since you’ve been thinking about it. A couple things may have happened. If it doesn’t bother you and you know you’ll do it when you’re ready, great. But if it’s been eating away at you and you’ve been putting it off for one reason or another, you may be feeling guilty, frustrated, or even upset with yourself for not having written that book yet.

Wow, that inner critic sure can be brutal.

I won’t go into details about what he/she is saying, but if you feel bad about not writing that book yet, you’ll only feel worse if you continue to avoid it. BUT at the same time, you may be thinking that you are so lost that you don’t know how. Or you just can’t commit to another project right now. Or you are waiting for an event to pass, whatever that is, before you start.

So try this while you wait. Consider that it may have been better for you to wait till now to write that book anyway. What if you didn’t have the system yet? Or hadn’t been through that one thing that was really impactful? What if you needed to go on a spiritual journey? Or a trip to Morocco? Or have a baby? Or a pedicure?

Maybe that growth was exactly what you needed before you could hit the right tone, provide that perfect story, or identify another pain point. Maybe you needed to go another mile before you were ready to draw a map.

Whatever it is that held you back, let it go. Take a breath. Honor the timing. Honor the journey. Honor the moments between the desire to write and the actual first word on the page. Because that could be exactly what you needed to make that book what it will actually be.

Without that extra time between, you would have written a different book altogether.