The Overthinking Trap (and How to Get Out of It)
Image by Magnet.me via Unsplash
Lately I have not been making the best use of my writing time. Oh, I put in the time, I just spend it doing things other than writing.
Now, sometimes it’s good to do something other than actual writing. Writers need to daydream, to research, to make notes and plan scenes. There are any number of productive things that are not actual writing we can do and still feel satisfied with a day’s work.
And then, there are is the unproductive waffling that happens when we allow ourselves to get stuck. Overthinking soon becomes a hamster wheel we can’t get off.
Should I amp up this subplot? Or even make it the main plot of my book? But it would mean a page-1 rewrite. Do I want to do that?
Should I add a more gothic or paranormal element to this? Is that passé? Do I make it humorous, or dark and twisty?
If I think about these questions a little harder, I’m sure I’ll come up with the perfect answer!
Of course, these are perfectly good questions. Nothing wrong with them! Except the first book I considered “finished” and the other I have half a draft of. And now I’m making no real progress on either. I’m trying to think my way through the problem, which only gets me so far.
Believe me, I know. I’m afraid the changes won’t work. I’m afraid I’ll spend weeks (or months) working and end up hating it. These are valid fears.
And yet, that’s the game of writing. If I knew exactly what I wanted to write all the time, there would be no fun. No thrill of discovery. No creativity involved.
It’s hard for me, though. The messy first draft? Ugh. I’d rather know – if not the whole story, at least enough to know it will work out the way I envision.
The book I thought was finished? Do I really want to rewrite it?
The problem with thinking is: It isn’t action.
Again, nothing wrong with thinking. But it needs to be accompanied by action, or it’s pretty useless. As writers, we have to get comfortable with big creative messes that are novels-in-the-making. It’s easy to compare our mess with the polished novels we read and feel discouraged. We don’t see the big piles of steaming poop they were before the authors dug out the gold and polished it up all pretty.
Easier said than done, right? When you realize your thinking is becoming unproductive, here is the remedy:
Recognize it. Stop fighting it. Say, “I’m overthinking this. It’s causing me stress and I’m not getting any writing done.”
If it helps, journal about it. Take the questions you have and write them down, and spend 10 or 15 minutes digging into the questions. BUT: don’t let that also become an excuse. Over-journaling is an equally unproductive form of overthinking.
You can also take a walk, and see if the answers settle when you sit back down to write.
You can try writing your questions on a piece of paper before bedtime, and focusing on them as you go to sleep, and maybe the answer will pop out of the unconscious during your next writing stint.
Commit to a small goal. If you have a time goal, use that – but make sure you’re actually writing. In either of my cases above, I need to write. It’s not editing time. It’s putting words on the page time, to see if the changes I want to make, make sense. Even 15 minutes is good.
Better would be a word goal. Make it as small as you need to so it doesn’t feel paralyzing. One page is about 250-300 words. I’m going to start with that.
Make it different: If you normally write on the computer, try writing longhand. If you normally write at home, go to a coffee shop or the park or anywhere “out” even if it’s in your car. Try dictating it. Wear something you don’t normally wear to write, like a fun hat or a leather jacket or a sweeping scarf. Use a different font, or a purple pen. These things all help you feel differently, and “see” differently, which can not only help kick you out of overthinking mode, but maybe even make writing fun again.
Even if you’ve blueprinted your book, or used a story grid or other form of outline, you can still get stuck. Even if you thought you knew where you wanted to go, you can get stuck. The only way out is through. At some point, you just have to write and see where it takes you. Trust the process and let it breathe. Let it take you where you need to go.
