Victor Hugo used to start his writing day by taking off his clothes and handing them to his valet, who wasn’t supposed to give them back until Hugo had finished his day’s work.
That’s how the story goes, anyway.
Now, some of that story may not make perfect sense—um, didn’t Victor Hugo have another set of clothes he could have put on? And why did he dress at all to begin with, if he was just going to take it all off?
But most of us get it. Getting started can be hard.
I’m usually fairly steady when it comes to working on my fiction, especially if I have a deadline, even a self-imposed one, looming. Sure, I procrastinate, but I don’t need to be naked to type.
But sometimes it depends on the project itself, or where we stand in relationship to it, or just what kind of a year we’re having.
Recently, I came to the end of a two-month rut (which I talk frankly about in my latest author Substack newsletter). I was still able to write fiction without too much delay, but I had—and still have—one nonfiction project that requires me to go to Hugoian efforts.
I’ve been working on this project, a language memoir about my four-year journey to Spanish fluency, since 2017. But it inevitably gets backburnered. Last week, I decided enough was enough, and I went searching for some carrots and sticks.
The stick part was the most fun.
I provided my credit card information to a website called Stickk that will donate $5 a week (I chose the amount) to the Trump Super PAC (I chose a charity I wouldn’t be caught dead supporting, usually) between now and the election for every week I don’t meet my writing goal! Yes, I really did!
You can also bet that I have procrastinated far less since I made this commitment. I am not going to fail, I promise you!
I’m not assuming that we share politics, but that doesn’t matter. You can choose a different cause or political charity as your “anti-charity.” The point is to make a commitment to something you’ve been avoiding and then gamify the process.
If you’d like to check out Stickk, it’s been around a long while and has some amazing stats to ponder. Over a half-million people have put $66 million on the line in order to coax themselves into getting fit, quitting smoking, sticking with a hobby, or learning something new for work. You can use a “referee” or choose the self-reporting method. If you don’t want to select a charity or anti-charity, you can have your money go to a pre-named friend if you don’t meet your daily, weekly, or monthly goal.
Or you can skip the actual “stick” part of the commitment. But I personally think you should go “all in.” Choose a minimum goal and then make that stick really big and dangerous. (Carrots are good, too. Carrots PLUS sticks are the best.)
The carrot I gave myself this week for spending one day writing nonfiction and the rest of the week writing fiction: a $5 bunch of flowers from a local farmstand. Tiny. Ephemeral. Can I earn one next week, too?
And now that I’ve told you about this, you can email me or comment on my social media every darn week, reminding me, You better be writing that language memoir, Andromeda! Don’t donate to the dark side!!!
See how fun that is? I’m smiling just thinking about it.
If you are finding writing less than fun or worth smiling about, change up your routine. Find some new accountability methods. If at least one of them can be whimsical and something you’ve never tried before, all the better.
Let me know how it’s going. We’re all in this together—even more so in the countdown to the election, when many of us will have a hard time focusing.
Andromeda Romano-Lax is a book coach and the author of six novels, including The Deepest Lake, which The Observer just listed as a Top 10 Travel Thriller for August.