I have to say, as titles for blog posts go, this one REALLY caught my eye: The 7 Habits of Highly Ineffective Writers: Powerful Lessons in Personal Sabotage.

I certainly clicked through. I bet most people are clicking through. This is from Jane Friedman’s blog, by the way.

I would personally define a “highly ineffective writer” as “someone who says they’re a writer but they never complete anything.” I don’t know if that’s in the ballpark for this blog post. Let’s take a look!

1) Trash talk your own book.

2) Assume it will all end in tears no matter what.

3) Put time and attention into everything but writing.

4) Try to please everyone …

All right, this list is kind of loosely alternating between things that stop someone from writing in the first place and things that make it hard to move forward after a draft is, perhaps, finished. That #1, trash talk your own book, is about someone who joins a critique group, but prefaces every offering with, “I’m sure this is just garbage and not worth your time.” Or that would be one form of this self-sabotage strategy.

This kind of negativity goes with #2. Those are almost the same. My book is garbage and there’s no way I’ll ever find an agent. My future as an author is doomed doomed doomed. It also kind of goes with #4, because that’s a kind of negativity too. My own judgment is crap, so if you want me to remove all the adverbs and adjectives, I’ll do that. How many other points here have to do with negative attitudes toward the book and the self?

Looks like one more:

5) Hear exaggerated negative reactions; disbelieve positive reactions.

Said: “Thank you for your powerful submission. Unfortunately, your novel is not a good fit for our press.”
Understood: “We hated your novel and we hate you, too.”

Then two of the problems have to do with distractibility. Only one is really a writing-level problem — a problem with inability to focus on either drafting OR editing, basically, and therefore an inability to make progress.

It looks to me like these “seven habits” therefore fall into three basic categories:

A) Over-negativity

B) The use of distractions or alternate hobbies to avoid writing. Or you could just say, Not really wanting to write.

C) Inability to focus on one thing at a time.

I think there’s at least one more. Or two. Or possibly three.

D) Over-positivity, so the author won’t change a word of his deathless prose and never writes anything publishable.

E) Inability to commit to finishing, so the author stalls out and never completes anything.

F) Inability to resist rabbit holes. I guess that’s really a subset of (B), though — it’s using research as a way to avoid writing; or at least it’s allowing research to derail or prevent writing.

Regardless, great title for a blog post, definitely eye-catching.

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