Today’s guest post is by Zena Dell Lowe.
Zena Dell Lowe is an award-winning screenwriter and founder of The Storyteller’s Mission, a podcast and online platform dedicated to helping writers craft powerful stories with depth, meaning, and moral clarity. Her work has earned multiple national screenwriting awards, including two Grand Prize honors for her feature screenplay Trial by Fire.
Website: thestorytellersmission.com
Substack: zenadell.substack.com
I used to say the best writing advice was simply “sit down and write.” But the truth is, even when I make myself sit down, I’m capable of getting absolutely nothing done. For years I beat myself up over this, certain I just lacked discipline. But I was writing constantly—just not on the stuff I should have been working on.
I’ve come to realize that when I procrastinate, it’s almost never about discipline. It’s because I’m overwhelmed by the scope of the project in front of me. If something feels too big, too long, or too important, it becomes daunting enough to cause paralysis. So, I started tricking my brain into working around its own resistance.
- Leave the Document Open.
This sounds ridiculously simple. But at the end of the day, if I leave a document open on my computer, it becomes the first thing I see the next day. I’ll sit down to work and voila, there’s my document, which I’ll inevitably start to tweak. Before you know it, I’m “in it.”
- Give Yourself Less Time.
Writers often think they need long stretches of uninterrupted time in order to create, but sometimes that just creates more opportunities for dread, avoidance, and overthinking. So, when I start a new project, instead of giving myself huge chunks of time, I limit myself to one hour or sometimes even less. Sounds counterintuitive, but for me, it creates urgency. I don’t have enough time allotted to waste any of it. And it seems possible to write for one hour, whereas four hours seem impossible.
- Stop Thinking of the Project as “Long Form.”
I can bang out a short project lickety-split. Less pressure. More fun. There’s not so much riding on the outcome. So now I trick myself into thinking of each scene in a long-form project as a short story unto itself. This reduces the psychological resistance and improves the overall writing since each scene has its own emotional arc and includes a clear beginning, middle, and end.
- Put the Computer Away and Write It Out Longhand.
When I write on my computer, I feel like I’m tapping into my logical, analytical, left-sided brain, where I end up editing the same paragraph a thousand times. But when I write longhand, it feels like I’m connected directly to the right-brained creative muse. I don’t edit because I’m just vomiting up words on the page. For me, the handwritten version often ends up surprisingly close to a finished draft, needing far fewer adjustments than I’d expected.
- Create Actual Accountability.
Every writer is motivated by deadlines, which is why getting that publishing deal or having an editor/agent is so helpful. But what if no one is waiting to read the work? For me, self-imposed deadlines have never worked. I can just change them!
But if I know someone else is expecting to read my work, it tricks my brain into action. It can’t just be a verbal check-in either. It’s not enough for me to only report back how much writing I accomplished. I need real people who are expecting to see real finished pages. A good critique group is worth its weight in gold.
- Make the Work Less Precious.
I procrastinate most on projects I care about most deeply because those are the ones where I expect to be brilliant. I don’t expect brilliance from a sketch or stand-up bit. But in my mind, a novel is supposed to be literature, and a screenplay should be eligible for an Academy Award. The expectation of brilliance creates pressure, fear, and avoidance.
So sometimes the trick is to simply make the project feel less precious. This is when I give myself permission to experiment. To play. To be sloppy. The writers who become productive are the ones who allow themselves to write bad first drafts.
- Diagnose the Procrastination.
Most writers treat procrastination like a moral failure. But in my experience, it’s more about emotional resistance. The key is to find the specific thing you’re avoiding.
Sometimes the project feels too precious. Sometimes we’re afraid we won’t be able to execute the vision we carry in our heads. Sometimes we just don’t know the story well enough yet to write it. Don’t assume you only have a discipline problem. Find out what your resistance is actually about, and the tricks above will make a lot more sense.
Which brings me back to where I started.
The more meaningful something becomes, the more psychologically dangerous it can feel to attempt it. So. resistance isn’t always proof that you’re doing something wrong—sometimes it’s proof the project matters.
These tricks have helped me lower the emotional barriers between me and the page. If you find yourself procrastinating like I often do, I hope they help you too.
