Writers, here’s how to slay the procrastination monsters

Yet somehow you can’t quite bring yourself to start making words appear on the page. Some tiny, squiggling temptation is pulling on you like gravity, and you yield to it almost without thinking.

Suddenly you’re off on a social media binge, or a coffee run, or a texting frenzy with friends. You may or may not be conscious of how much time it takes to go off on these tangents, but you sure do feel lousy when you’ve used up all your writing time on them.

The world is full of endless distractions that can derail your dreams, but you can establish procrastination-busting habits to have ready when needed.

You might already know about blocking distractions such as social media and email and removing any objects of temptation such as books, magazines and other forms of print media not essential to your current writing project.

Here are five ways to overcome procrastination and jump-start your productivity:

1. Check your production schedule, and review past work.