Procrastination: a writer’s worst enemy.

Or maybe that’s just what they want you to think!

Who is the ‘they’ in this scenario? To be honest I haven’t really developed the ‘world’ that far. Organized people, I guess? You know the ones, they get concertina folders and actually use them. They buy dividers for practicality not because they have cute illustrations on them, AND they use them. Not just to coax spiders onto so you can put them out the window.

That doesn’t matter, though. My point is that not all of us are like that. Some of us faff around and put things off and avoid dealing with looming deadlines.

Is that great? OK, I’ll admit it isn’t. I would probably be better off if I didn’t do everything at the last minute. If I am honest with you, though, none of us are ever going to find out because that isn’t going to happen. I have been pulling all-nighters to turn in projects since I got control of my lightbulb. At this point I don’t think it’s going to change…but that’s not all bad!

OK, I should be doing a specific thing that I’m not doing. On the other hand the things I have done to avoid the Specific Thing are all fairly useful.

• I designed a series of ads for the Halloween season and saved them in my very organised filing system.
• Sometimes I need to send a writer’s CV out to people. I usually just roughly redo my resume, send it out, lose the edit, and have to do it all again. Now I’ve got a very fancy, aesthetically pleasing !_ArtsCV_TA_Moore and a !_ProfCV_TA_Moore saved in the admin folder.
• I dwelt for a while on the fact that even though I’ve never met Brad Pitt, and probably never will, the fact that so many people say he smells bad does make me find him less attractive. OK, so not all of them are useful.
• I have finalised the layout for the paperback of the Night Shift collected volume which I’ve been putting off on the grounds it was a bit scary.
• Dyed my hair. That might not sound important, but it was this or committing to a full time beanie to cover up the mess.
• Walked the writing staffie.
• Sorted out my filing system because I’ve been doing a lot of photoshop and covers. Those things ate your space up!
• Eventually finished the Specific Thing I was Avoiding because I ran out of excuses.
• As a reward had a GF Chinese from my wonderful and very tasty local Chinese restaurant.

Just because you struggle with time management doesn’t mean that it’s always time wasted. Sometimes it is. Did I need to watch all of Top Chef…ALL of Top Chef…over the last month? OK, no I didn’t and I learned nothing. Still, if you can fence off your procrastination options so that even when you’re not getting ahead of your deadlines you’re still getting stuff done, it feels better.

And I think all of us procrastinators know that the guiltier you feel about your futzing around? Just makes you futz around more, because somehow that’s going to help! So if you can avoid that recursive rat hole, you want to.