Name the kind of avoidance
If you do not know what happens next, you have a story problem. If you know but cannot bear to write it badly, you have a perfection problem. If you cannot keep your eyes open, you have an energy problem. Calling all three “laziness” hides the useful information.
Ask: what would make starting feel safer or smaller right now?
Remove one piece of friction
Put the phone in another room. Close the research tabs. Decide on the scene before the session. Keep the draft somewhere obvious. These changes sound almost insultingly simple, but procrastination thrives on tiny exits.
Use a ten-minute start. You may stop when the timer ends, without bargaining. Often the work continues; when it does not, you still kept the appointment.
Know when delay is useful
Not every pause is avoidance. A scene can need a walk, a conversation or a night away. Useful incubation produces a question or a new angle. Avoidance produces only more dread.
Rest has an end. Avoidance keeps renegotiating.
If you choose to pause, decide when you will return and leave a note in ForgePad explaining the problem as plainly as you can.
Do not punish yourself back to work
Shame makes the draft more threatening. Skip the speech about wasted time. Open the scene and make one change. The quickest route back is a small piece of contact with the work.
Reduce the distance to the page
Open ForgePad, choose one scene and give it ten honest minutes before doing anything else.
Write in ForgePad ↗