Procrastination: Friend or Foe
Procrastination. I often joke that I am the world's worst procrastinator. I'm sure that isn't completely true, but I suspect I'm in the running, at least. That's true of everything from paying bills to my writing. I'm the one who rushes around in the morning because I have to drop the water bill off on my way to work because I've let it go 'til the due date. Sure, I had money in checking. Sure, the water company thoughtfully provided me with an envelope. Sure, I had stamps in the little cabinet by the phone. But, somehow, I was always too busy, too tired, too rushed. So I leave early on the last day I can possibly drop off the payment so I can drop the stupid payment off on my way to work. And I am the one who can't decide what story to submit to my writing group's anthology. Here I am, nearly to the deadline, and I just now submitted my stories. I had written several stories, and had a few poems that I had done over the past couple of years that I wanted to submit. But I was afraid. Afraid my fellow writers would laugh at them. Afraid they wouldn't be good enough. Afraid they wouldn't be accepted. I kept rewriting the stories, deleting parts, scrapping entire works. Today, I decided I will NOT wait until the very last minute. I sat down and went through what I had, and uploaded them to my group. Hopefully, they'll like at least one story enough to include it in the anthology. But now that I've done it, I find myself thinking about my history of procrastination. I have always done things at the deadline. Always crammed for tests when I was in school.
Perhaps my problem isn't merely procrastination. What if I simply work better under pressure? What have I had some success with? National Novel Writing Month is the first thing that comes to mind. I know some people don't take it seriously and just go for word count. Personally, though, I use it as a deadline to get a rough draft done. And I've done it, three years in a row. How many people have written three novels in three years? Not many. But it reminds me of a conversation I had with Max McCoy (who, by the way, wrote Hinterland, a book I recommend - interesting how it was put together). He told me that he wrote that entire novel in a certain number of days - seems like it was about a month. I was, of course, impressed. He told me how he wrote for 20 hours a day sometimes when he was up against a deadline - and then he said that he can't write unless he has a deadline. Apparently, that's something we have in common. I consider him a successful writer, so perhaps it is time that I accept that I need a deadline and quit calling myself a procrastinator.
Now, I think I'm going to go find that anthology information that I picked up at the Missouri Writer's Guild conference. I think there's a deadline coming up . . .
Perhaps my problem isn't merely procrastination. What if I simply work better under pressure? What have I had some success with? National Novel Writing Month is the first thing that comes to mind. I know some people don't take it seriously and just go for word count. Personally, though, I use it as a deadline to get a rough draft done. And I've done it, three years in a row. How many people have written three novels in three years? Not many. But it reminds me of a conversation I had with Max McCoy (who, by the way, wrote Hinterland, a book I recommend - interesting how it was put together). He told me that he wrote that entire novel in a certain number of days - seems like it was about a month. I was, of course, impressed. He told me how he wrote for 20 hours a day sometimes when he was up against a deadline - and then he said that he can't write unless he has a deadline. Apparently, that's something we have in common. I consider him a successful writer, so perhaps it is time that I accept that I need a deadline and quit calling myself a procrastinator.
Now, I think I'm going to go find that anthology information that I picked up at the Missouri Writer's Guild conference. I think there's a deadline coming up . . .
Comments