Episode 257: Writing Obstacles

In this week's episode, we take a look at five obstacles that can impact your writing, and offer tips and tricks for dealing with them.

This coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Cloak of Dragons, Book #1 in the Cloak Mage series, (as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy) at my Payhip store:

DRAGONAUDIO50

The coupon code is valid through July 21, 2025. So if you need a new audiobook this summer, we’ve got you covered!

TRANSCRIPT

00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates

 

Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 257 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is June 27th, 2025, and today we are looking at mindset obstacles to writing. Before we get to that, we'll have Coupon of the Week, an update at my current writing progress, and then we will do Question of the Week.

 

First up, let's do Coupon of the Week. This week's coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Cloak of Dragons, Book Number One in the Cloak Mage series (as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy) at my Payhip store. That is DRAGONAUDIO50. And as always, the coupon code and the links to the store will be included in the show notes. This coupon code is valid through July the 21st, 2025, so if you need a new audiobook this summer, we've got you covered.

Now let's have an update on my current writing and audiobook projects. The rough draft of Shield of Power, the sixth and final book in the Shield War series, is done and I'm editing it. As of this recording, I am about 68% of the way through the first pass of editing. I had hoped to be a bit further along than I actually was, but there was a lot to do this week and because of that, I think it's going to slip to early July for the release date. I'd hoped to have it out in June, but I don't think that's going to happen, but it should be not too much longer once we get to July. Stealth and Spells Online: Final Quest, I’m 114,000 words into that. So I am very much hoping that will come out very quickly once Shield of Power is out.

And I'm also 14,000 words into Ghost in the Siege, which would be the sixth and final book in the Ghost Armor series. So it sounds like my Super Summer of Finishing Things is well underway and making good progress. Hopefully I can continue that.

 

In audiobook news, Shield of Battle and Ghost in the Corruption are both essentially done in audio and just have to get through processing. Shield of Battle was narrated by Brad Wills and Ghost in the Corruption was narrated by Hollis McCarthy. They both did an excellent job and I'm looking forward to being able to share those audiobooks with you in July. So it looks like July is going to be a big month for releases with Shield of Power, Stealth and Spells Online: Final Quest, and then the audiobooks of Ghost in the Corruption and Shield of Battle. So lots to look forward to in July.

 

00:02:20 Question of the Week

Now it's time for Question of the Week, which is intended to inspire interesting discussions of enjoyable topics. This week's question: how do you pass the time when you find yourself compelled to spend a good chunk of time waiting away from home or work (such as in the hospital waiting room, in line at the Department of Motor Vehicles, or waiting in your car to pick up someone from sports practice, a sort of situation like that)? And as you can expect, we had a range of answers.

 

Justin says: Reading your books.

 

Mary says: Reading.

 

David says: Reading or listening to books is my default. Sometimes email.

 

Keith says: I pace around mulling on problems that I otherwise have no time to think about.

 

Gary says: A variety of things. I do think it is good practice to teach yourself to wait an hour or more without something external to occupy your mind. My own opinion is that our constant need for distraction hinders us in many ways.

 

Mandy says: Reading. If I know I'm going to be waiting (or suspect it), I bring a book or my Kindle and I read. I almost always have a book in my car, too.

 

Mike says: I read books by Jonathan Moeller.

 

John says: I bring my tablet and read.

 

Juana says: I read.

 

Catriona says: Read a book or play a game on my phone. When I worked, I’d do emails, but I am retired now.

 

Tom says: Usually I read a book on my Kindle app on my phone. Often it's one of yours.

 

Bonnie says: Usually I scroll through Facebook or do one of the games on my phone or tablet. Don't usually read because I get focused and have a hard time tearing back to reality.

 

And Jesse says: Reading ebooks or thinking through Work problems for later. If I know up front it'll be an hour or more, I'll bring a laptop and tether it.

 

For myself, the answer is easy. I bring my laptop and work on my current book. The inspiration for this question was that I had to bring my car in for some maintenance, so I spent the time working on Stealth and Spells Online: Final Quest and got a thousand words more into it. I've been doing that for a long time. I think most of my books for the last 10 years, or at least a majority of them, I had a session where I worked in a waiting room on them. I think the earliest I can recall working in a book in a waiting room would be Soul of Skulls way back in 2013, possibly 2012.

 

00:04:22 Handling Obstacles as a Writer

 

Now onto our main topic of this week, obstacles. We're going to do a series of a couple mindset obstacles that get in the way of writers. The first one we're going to talk about is obstacles because no writer works without obstacles.

Some of them are internal, like mental or physical illness, self-doubt, and perfectionism. Others are external, like having your fence collapse in a storm or being interrupted every five minutes by a toddler who needs something. There is a false belief that time is the biggest obstacle, and if only a writer could write full-time, they would finally be able to start writing or finish a draft. The sea of full-time writers with unfinished books would easily prove this wrong, as would the wide variety of traditionally published authors with full-time day jobs.

 

I would argue that the biggest obstacle you'll face is how well you handle any kind of obstacle and develop mental flexibility and resilience. In previous series, I've talked about some of the practical ways to help with distractions, procrastination, and managing time wasters. In this series, I'm going to focus on things that derail writers from a mindset perspective.

In this episode, we're going to focus on five examples of obstacles that writers face and how to mentally shift your perspective on them.

 

#1: Getting started. The perfect is the enemy of the possible. I say this often, and I say it often because it's true. Many people don't want to write until they have perfect conditions and feel like they're creatively inspired. Those days I'm afraid, are quite few. It's more productive to work consistently within your limitations than to wait for inspiration and motivation to magically find you. It's generally easier to edit than it is to write, so just get something done on the page without editing as you go.

 

Activation energy is also the enemy of many. Essentially, some people struggle with transitions and starting something because it takes a lot of mental energy for them to get going or to switch gears. Routines remove the decision making that takes up a lot of that energy.

Making the process of starting as easy and pleasant as possible also makes it less daunting. How can I make this easy? It is a great question to ask yourself. Start with a block of time that is so small it feels ridiculously easy, such as one minute. Write without stopping for one minute each day without making any edits, and you'll end up with paragraphs sooner rather than later.

 

#2: Short amounts of time with purpose add up over the long run. For example, our transcriptionist started writing 300 to 500 words each weekday for 15 minutes as a part of our November Writing Challenge. Even with taking time off for the holidays and real life stuff, she hit 50,000 words on her rough draft in May just by committing to the short burst of focused work as part of her daily routine.

 

For myself, I mentioned earlier that I'm 114,000 words into Stealth and Spells Online: Final Quest, and I started that back in October 2024, and I've been scratching away at it for 500 words a day for that entire time, which as you can clearly see, adds up.

More time doesn't necessarily mean more productivity. A small liberal arts college was once concerned that students with a work study award (meaning a part time job on campus offered to those under a certain family income) didn't have as much time to study as their more privileged peers. What they found after looking into the matter was that students with work study awards were getting better grades, so they set out to interview them to find out why. Those they interviewed had schedules and routines for studying that the more affluent students hadn't developed. Even if you don't have the privilege of having a whole day free to do whatever you want, spending your day purposefully is far more important.

 

Finally, be honest about how you're actually spending your time. For example, the American Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that the average person surveyed spent 2.7 hours per day watching television, to say nothing of wasting time on social media or other forms of entertainment. By taking an honest look at how you're spending your time, you might find time that you can take from other less useful or even less enjoyable activities.

 

My mindset about managing my time is that I do try to be pretty disciplined about it. When I'm writing new material, I use the Pomodoro method and try to hit a minimum of 6,000 words a day of new stuff. When I'm editing, I have a number in mind of words I want to edit per day. Usually I try to get around 18,000 to 25,000. Though with that, it can depend very strongly on how much needs to be moved or changed or deleted in the section that I'm editing.

 

I do have things that I spend time on that aren't necessarily productive, of course. I did probably spend about 50 minutes last night playing Oblivion Remaster on Xbox. I do go to the gym for an hour every morning, though I really think at my age that's more necessary maintenance than an indulgent hobby. But it's always good to be honest about what you're spending time on and where you can improve it and maybe rearrange things to be a bit better.

 

#3: Number three is interruptions. Interruptions are inevitable and unavoidable. There will never be a day in your life when you're not interrupted by family members, friends, domestic tasks, chores, and even the occasional genuine emergency. Accepting that no perfect day exists and interruptions will be part of your writing routine is the first step in helping yourself manage them.

 

Focus on the interruptions you can control. If you can pick where you write, pick a spot where it's harder for people to pass by and interrupt you. If you can wake up a bit earlier than the rest of your household to squeeze out a quick hundred words with your first cup of coffee, then choose that time, even if it’s a smaller block of time than after when the kids go to bed.

Plan what you'll do when interruptions come and how you'll need to be flexible with your routine in order to get writing done. Here are some examples. Your computer breaks down or you're stuck in a hospital waiting room during your writing time. The solution is to keep a pocket notebook somewhere convenient or to use a notes app on your phone so you at least get some words down in either of these situations. You have a long commute and find that when you get home, your kids come to see you every five minutes while you're trying to write. Where is there time in your day you can control? Maybe you could squeeze out five minutes writing on your lunch break. Maybe you could find a way to dictate your writing on the way home, provided your local laws allow for hands-free device use and it doesn't impair your attentiveness while driving. You have a whole day planned to write and a storm hits, and sometimes you just have to accept that getting something done is better than trying to get the whole goal in the event that something comes up.

Like for example, I've recently had to spend a good deal of time doing fence repair due to storm damage, and on those days I didn't get as much writing done as I wanted, but I did get some writing done, and as I do frequently say, one slice of pizza is better than no pizza at all. So when you do have days like that, it's better just to grab the one slice of pizza and get a little bit of writing done than to beat yourself up over how you didn't get to the writing goal that was in your head.

 

#4: Number four is distractions. Distractions like social media and doom scrolling are a huge obstacle, even though they feel more like a treat or a break than a problem. Treating them like a problem instead of a solution to not wanting to work is an important mindset shift.

If such things like social media and doom scrolling are keeping you from beating your goals, distractions have to be managed like any other obstacle we're talking about. I've talked about practical ways to manage distractions in my November Writing Challenge series. I recommend you check that out for practical tips.

 

#5: And finally, number five, motivation. Consistency over passion or motivation wins the day. Slogging through when you don't feel motivated doesn't mean that you're not creative or a good writer. In fact, every good writer will admit that they do that more often than you might think. Removing your ideal of what you should be as a writer and focusing instead on your actual daily behaviors is important. It's easier to keep a routine going (even imperfectly or badly) than it is to keep having to start it over and over again.

 

There's a theory that was popularized on Reddit called No Zero Days that essentially says that you must do something (however small) each day in order to further your goal.

 

For example, instead of having the goal of writing 1,000 words each day, the goal is to write every single day. Even getting one single word on the page each day helps keeps the routine or habit going. It makes it easier to start the next day and helps with any guilt associated with a bad day or difficulties getting started.

 

In conclusion, obstacles are inevitable, but many of the ones we discussed today, especially distractions, are largely within your control. Even when you're not in control of an obstacle, you're fully in control of how you react to it and how quickly you can regroup and keep going. So those five tips, hopefully they will help you navigate your way around any obstacles to your writing goals.

 

So that is it for this week. Thanks for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful. A reminder that you can listen to all the back episodes at https://thepulpwritershow.com. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave your review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and see you all next week.