How to Use Regret to Fuel Your Writing Practice and Overcome Procrastination
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Wait, what? Regret? Why would I want to use that? Don’t I want to try to avoid feeling regret?
Well, yes. But being human, we will make mistakes that cause us to feel regret. And that’s not a bad thing – if it fuels our determination to do better.
We may live with many kinds of regrets, big and small, but today I want to talk specifically about regrets that have to do with writing, or our creative life. Regrets tend to come in two flavors:
Things we regret doing
Things we regret not doing.
I’d be willing to bet a pretty large amount of money that most writers’ regrets stem more from not writing, than from something they wrote.
Daniel H. Pink, in his book, The Power of Regret, tells us that there are four kinds of regrets:
Foundation (if only I’d... studied harder; taken care of my health; saved more money...)
Boldness (not taking advantage of opportunities; not taking enough risks)
Moral (not doing the right thing when we should have)
Connection (not creating and maintaining connections with friends, family, and community).
Not writing, or not honoring our need to create, spills across at least three of these categories in some way.
It’s a Foundation regret, because utilizing our creative talents is a foundational need. It may be an education regret (didn’t get that MFA, or take that screenwriting class), or a career regret (I didn’t focus my energy on writing, now I work 80-hour weeks in banking).
It’s a Boldness regret, because we didn’t take the risk. We either succumbed to fear (what if it isn’t any good?) or we didn’t send our work out into the world. We didn’t take a chance, tell our story.
It’s a Connection regret, because writing is a profound way of connecting with others. It’s how we tell our story, whether as memoir or fiction, or even essays or features. We bring up the things we think are important, and hope for a reader’s response. Writing gives us a place, and a voice, in the world.
But too often we succumb to the fallacy of future discounting – when we say “I’ll write tomorrow,” thinking we’ll magically have more time, or feel more like doing it then. Tomorrow comes, and we may push it to the next day, then the next... until weeks, months, or years go by, and we have little or nothing to show for it. Future discounting is all about indulging in the short-term pleasures of the present and avoiding the discomfort of not knowing what to write or if it will be any good. But a year, two years, from now, we could have a manuscript in our hands, if only we do the work today.
Of course, a year (or more) passes, and we feel... you guessed it, regret that we didn’t do the writing. We think back over our long list of excuses and think “if only...” We can let that lead to depression or feeling bad about ourselves, or we can use it to fuel our intention to do better from now on.
So how can we use regret to spur our writing? Here are some suggestions based on Pink’s work:
Have some self-compassion. Beating yourself up over what you didn’t do is pointless. We all procrastinate occasionally, or make decisions based on the comfort of the moment rather than our goals.
Use at least to minimize regret, even if you don’t quite meet your goals: “i didn’t write 1000 words today, but at least I wrote 500.” This can also be used to ward off future regret: “I can’t write every day this week, but at least I can make time on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.”
Anticipate the future. Close your eyes. Take three deep breaths, and ground yourself. You may not feel like writing today, but...
How will you feel when you have written, vs. Not writing today? You’re sure you’ll write tomorrow... but will you really, based on your past history?
Think ahead to the end of the week: how will you feel if you have met your goals? How will you feel if you don’t?
Think of a year from now. A year is made up of 365 days, just like this one. What can you do today to ensure you won’t feel regret then?
Think about yourself at eighty. What will you regret not having done? Will you regret not writing the book(s) you could have?
Regret can be a powerful ally, if we use it effectively. Regret reminds us that we have agency. If we didn’t live up to our ideals in achieving our writing goals, we have a new opportunity each day.
It might take some practice to take regret seriously - that is, to allow ourselves to really feel it. Then we realize,
Wow, the pain of regret really is worse than the pain of doing the work.
The more often that realization hits you, the harder it will be to ignore.
What will you choose to do today?
