Are you cat-waxing?

 Photography by fotoedu/Thinkstock

Are you?

Not sure what cat-waxing is or how it relates to writing?

You're not the only one... 

But, let me back up slightly and explain where I heard the term.  I generally listen to a number of writing (as well as some other) podcasts.  It was a great way to spend the time I often spent driving in the car by myself.  Except now, I'm driving a whole lot less, so I'm a bit behind in my podcast consumption.  

I decided to try listening to a few of them, in between brief chats, while out with my son on his required daily walks for his walking fitness PE class.  Today, I ended up listening to an episode of I Should Be Writing by Mur Lafferty that was posted in March. (ISBW #483 Crap and Revision, if you'd like to listen to it yourself.) I heard her talking about all the things she was doing during revision that weren't revision and she mentioned cat-waxing.  I made a note of this in my phone and continued my walk, determined to look into it further when I returned home.

In looking it up, I found that one link, which led to an article from a writing conference, was a dead end, so I continued scrolling.  Eventually, I changed my search term slightly and found the urban dictionary entry for it which reads: Cat waxing verb: an industry term for procrastination by writers, with heavy connotation of trying to justify the activity as something that "had" to be done. Usually activities that can arguably be considered productive, like household chores or (highly tangential) background research."  (It also included the hashtags: #avoidant behavior, #procrastinating, and #displacement activity.)  These are things we are encouraged to avoid during NaNoWriMo in November in order to reach the 50k word goal and I find it funny I haven't heard the term until now.

Whether you're working on a project for Camp NaNoWriMo this April or not, if you're currently working on any sort of writing project at all, have you found yourself guilty of cat-waxing?  Had you heard the term before now? Do you listen to any writing related podcasts?

Please, comment below and let us know!