LifePundit

A Master Procrastinator Reveals Her Secrets

There is no one who is better at procrastinating than me. I have some articles that were due last Friday. They are interesting articles I'm writing for one of my favorite clients. But I am stuck. It isn't writer's block. It's .... being a master procrastinator.

I will tell what I did today in hopes that you can learn from me. Writing this post is also one more task to help me achieve my procrastination goals.

Here’s what I’ve done today instead of finishing my articles:

• Vacuumed

• Mopped
• Cleared kitchenette area and cleaned it up (I’m talking moving furniture into the living room until we decide what to do with the old stuff) to make room for when the new table and chairs come tomorrow
• Reorganized part of laundry room (!!!)
• Six loads of laundry (no folding, though; we’ll be clean but wrinkled)
• And get this. Went to Lowe’s and bought stick-down vinyl tile, cut out the damaged part of the laundry room floor, and used a box cutter to cut the stick-down (non-matching) vinyl tile squares into shapes that resembled the part of the floor I cut out (not a very workmanlike fit) and stuck them down. They pretty much look like dooky but at least the old vinyl that was rolled back, tearing, splitting and catching on the laundry room door and breaking off into pieces is gone. Who knows. It looks so bad I might get a new floor out of this (way overdue), if Paul even notices it. However, that was not my intention. I thought I was suddenly a vinyl floor installer. The guy at Lowe’s told me how to do it. (I had to reglue part of the old floor around the edges where I cut the piece out). And even though I had picked up some stick-down tile a few months ago and finally decided which color was the closest, it was discontinued, so I picked out a color on the spot. Uh oh. The existing floor is a golden white; the pieced in squares are a grey-white.
  

Then, I had an appointment with a friend, which I decided not to cancel because that was yet another excuse not to write the articles -- plus she's leaving for Mexico tomorrow so I needed to wish her bon voyage, When I told her what I'd been up to she said that was an awful lot of work for procrastination and probably it would have been easier to just write the articles.  (I love her.)

 She also had some insight into how/why I get myself into this. When something is due, I take a militaristic approach to managing me. I say to myself that I can’t do anything fun until I’ve gotten my work done. She called this taking myself hostage. And, like any good hostage, I resist.

Then the next thing I did was to pick up Lily from school. But she didn't feel well, so I took her to the local

Doc in the Box. Lily is okay – unless she’s coming down with the flu, a virus or has a brain tumor on her pituitary gland. 

How comforting that last is.

There was guy at the doc’s who is one of those skating car hops at Sonic. He had just been run over by an SUV. The manager of Sonic stopped the SUV driver, who was mad that the car hop had “hit” his car. The guy looked pretty good for having been run over by an SUV. He was very chatty, a dreadlocked soul with tattoos who looked like the shock of it all was almost worse than the injuries, though I think he had a broken knee cap and was swaddled from hip to toe on one side with all manner of padded devices. I even overheard that maybe a hip was out of joint. Maybe he was chatty because they had him feeling little pain.

Okay, suppertime. Then I really will write those articles. I always do -- eventually.

Nom de Plume

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Me Mores

A lot of people, including my mother-in-law, have been inspired to write their memoirs. This is a good thing for family history. For instance, if you wanted to see where dysfunctional behavior entered the family tree, a relative's memoir might be a good place to start.

And grudgingly, in my mother-in-law's defense, her memoir is about growing up in war-time England and it is an interesting story that should be preserved though the memoir doesn't need to be spoken about weekly.

Other relatives have interesting stories to tell and I wish that they would tell them. There's so much that doesn't get told in a family, and while these stories wouldn't necessarily be interesting to an outsider, they are treasures to family members.

For example, it wasn't until a couple of Thanksgivings ago that I heard the story of Saintly Brother's daring scuba diving adventures and how he and his friends were almost swept to sea. His own children had never heard the story and we all sat fascinated as he told us how he and his friends had started off their "scuba" adventures by trying to swim underwater and breathe through a hollow reed like they do in the movies (can't be done) and progressed to an elaborate home-made diving rig that used a paint compressor and some hoses to supply air to a modified diving mask. They mainly saw murky water, but they also were nearly swept to sea. None of the parents ever knew. He was a smart kid with a good imagination and access to equipment of all sorts. I wish he'd write a memoir. It would be a good one.

While many of us have interesting life stories, most of us do not. Yet the trend to write one's memoir gets stronger. A friend who just returned from a writer's workshop said that there is a term for this "writing-one's-memoir-even-though-one-hasn't-done-anything-interesting": these are not called memoirs, but "Me Mores."

Just doing my job to keep you informed.

Good Economic News

Yes, there is some good economic news. It barely squeaks by as good news, but I'll take whatever good news I can get. Fiction sales were up ever so slightly, with adult fiction sales up by 0.4 percent. Juvenile fiction (at my house that would be the Twilight series) had a 6.2 percent increase.

I heard at the Myrtle Beach Writer's Conference that the publishing industry slips into recession at a slower rate than other industries because people can't afford to do other things so they turn to reading.

Bad times can bring out good things. Reading, kindness to each other, simpler food, time together and prayer.

Then there's anxiety, depression, worry, foreclosures, skipped medical treatments....

Forget all that and go read a good book. It beats the news any day.

The Treadmill Desk

Here's my new desk. It's the brownish-tannish board clamped down on the arms of my Christmas present from Paul (I asked for it: one should not receive a piece of exercise equipment unless one asks for it). He really struggled building this desk. I can write with no trouble at 2 mph, but it's difficult to use the mouse because my hand is moving. For a while I was having trouble getting a little bit seasick while I walk because apparently there's a little bit of waddle thrown in with the walk. If you notice on the left wall there's a small calendar there. I get a gold star for every day I walk. It's called an Honesty Calendar, and I've found I'll do anything for a gold star. No, rather, I'll do anything to have a calendar filled with gold stars and no voids. Or few voids.

Here's a better photo of the desk part. The colored fabric (blue) covering the clamps so as not to scratch the treadmill arms is VetWrap (also called CoFlex), which is used to bandage horses. You can't very well use sticky tape on a hairy leg. The desk can be removed so other people can use the treadmill. I find that I while I can write creatively and sometimes answer e-mails and talk on the phone on the treadmill, I'm not so good at blogging, so blogging has been light.
I'll try to add that to my treadmilling skills, but forgive me in advance for the typos. Can't walk, chew gum and spell right at the same time.

I feel better and I'm getting a lot of writing done. But the poor dog isn't getting to go on as many walks. Better go take him now before it gets down to 10 degrees or whatever awful thing it's supposed to do tonight. He and Tiger get to sleep inside. Izzie, the indoor cat, won't like that. Ah me. It's kind of like the Middle East, only I'm in charge and I say that the dog and outdoor cat get to stay. So there.

Off to walk outdoors. What a concept!

Is it Procrastination or Preparation?

It's good to be missed. Thank you, Nancy. What am I doing? Procrastinating! And I've found a better way to procrastinate than blogging: cleaning up and making plans for 2009.

Sort of like planning your New Year's resolutions early, only without actually having to start them for a month.

I've also been driving. Soon I'll be a Teamster, just from hauling Lily around where she needs to go. Minimum of 60 miles per day. More than that if she actually goes anywhere other than school.

So what's going to be different in 2009?

I'm going to be walking while working. I've got a new treadmill and Paul is going to build me a desk (right Paul?) as soon as he's finished renovating his new office and moving in (scheduled for this weekend. The toilet is out of our den!). Right now I'm using a piece of pink Styrofoam for my treadmill desk but it's not very stable. Walking while working is supposed to improve your health, your sleep, burn calories and annoy the cat. A Mayo Clinic researcher says that you can lose 67 pounds a year simply by slowly walking while you work. I don't want to lose 67 pounds (but I might after Christmas candy). To see a video about the concept, click here.

I'm going to do JaNoWriMo. I didn't "win" NaNoWriMo, but was very pleased with how much more I wrote so I've signed up for a similar but less technically spectacular (the web site, I mean) event where you do the same thing: write 50,000 words in a month, only the month is January. I'm going to write a romance that you will never, ever see with my name on it. Frissons everywhere!

Then there are other goals that I'd like to keep to myself. Such as not seeing my MiL at all in 2009.

How about you?

Getting Faster but Not Better

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lab.drwicked.com

Later I'll have to do a post about how I cut 1020 words in 11 hours of editing, but for now, Go Me! See previous post here. This is hilarious. And yes, I'm really writing words on my novel. Not quality words but words are being written in sentences that follow one another in some reasonable fashion that passes for basic English, though not good fiction.

Write or Die -- This is a Hoot!

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lab.drwicked.com

Here's something for you other NaNoWriMo-ers out there. Write or Die.You set your word count and time goals and start typing in their little text box. Then you decide what mode you want to write in, gentle, normal or kamikaze.

If you pause too long to think, get some medicinal chocolate or check out the latest LOLcat, the screen will start to flash. In normal mode if that doesn't get you back to work, truly obnoxious music will play. In kamikaze mode, it will start erasing what you've written one word at a time.

Dr. Wicked, where have you been all my life?

I'll have to say I was productive. Only about once sentence in the 1002 words I wrote is actually salvagable, but who has time to worry about that when if you stop to think it will start erasing!

Off now to write or die. (And it's free, though he likes donations.)

Oops! I'm geting slower. Here are the results of my second attempt.

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lab.drwicked.com

How to Get in Trouble While Minding Your Own Business

I just wrote a nice post about how some men go "dear hunting" when they say they're out "deer hunting," (in other words, they are out cheating on their wives instead of hunting) but I accidentally deleted the thing and don't feel like writing it again. If you want to read the news story, it's here. I especially liked the part where one man had a whole pack of coon dogs but didn't go hunting. On the way home from being up to no good he would pull over to the side of the road and roll in the mud so he'd look like he'd been hunting.

As for me, I'm here minding my own business and I continue to get fall-out from that. As I've already whined, my mother-in-law invited a bunch of relatives down from up North for Thanksgiving. We didn't know these folks were coming and had plans to have a low-key Thanksgiving at home while I worked on my novel and Paul finished (I hope) his renovations for his new office. We were even going out for dinner that day -- not cooking for the three of us. Our lives are already out of balance. Paul sometimes gets home after I'm already asleep.

But my mother-in-law isn't interested in what's going on with us; she's interested in getting me to put on a show, a Martha Stewart Thanksgiving at our house for her to brag about to her friends. Apparently, in her social set (middle school) at the retirement community, there's a big competition going on about what your children and DILs do for you. I don't know who else is keeping score, but she is. 

In fact, she has completely recreated herself. She's an English lady (she's lived in this country over fifty years and never been an English lady before) who has tea in the afternoons. She's never had tea in her American life until she moved to this community. And she's got magazines all about The Manors of England all over her coffee table. Nobody has ever seen her subscribe to these before or have any interest in doing things the English way. In fact, when I met her she was all about Danish Modern. Maybe one day when I'm feeling mean I'll do a whole post about how one can recreate oneself to a higher social status in the retirement community. It's just the same as middle school. Honest. Only with afternoon tea and a few props.

Back to Thanksgiving. I told her that maybe we could do that, but only if Paul's office is finished so that the building supplies that are stored in our den and living room will be out of the house. I didn't say no. I said I didn't know. And she blasted me and said to forget it.

Now it's clear that my hesitation has been conveyed to others and we've offended the relatives from up North, who thought that we would be glad to see them (we always are) and, to use their words, "would jump at the chance to host Thanksgiving."

Yes, but not this year, this month, this time.

When I tried to explain that I have two editors interested in my book and I need to work on that instead of moving building supplies (to where I don't know) and getting ready for company (more company than our dining room will hold, by the way), it was clear that no one understood why I couldn't do that later. That's what happens when you're a writer. People figure that you can always do it later. What they don't understand is that later was a long, long time ago. I need to do this now.

I checked again with Paul to be sure that he, too, wasn't mad at me. He said absolutely not, that "time kills a deal." What if the editors who are interested move on to other publishers, change jobs, leave the industry? Now is the time. Now is my time. And even so, it will be a few months before my manuscript is ready to send.

But the relatives are saying, what's a few days? A week?

It's the possibility of losing my story. My momentum. My confidence. I am one day away from writer's block. I've had writer's block last for years. But now, I'm writing. And that's what I'm called to do and that's what I'm going to do.

And it's not that I'm being inhospitable. I've offered as many relatives as would like to stay in our guest room and other nooks and crannies. I do welcome them and would love to see them. I'd try to get in my writing hours before they're awake. I just haven't agreed to cook a feast and empty the house of all the things that are supposed to go into the building. (And I assume people will know better than to use the toilet and sinks piled up in the middle of the den.)

I also understand that this is a tough time for some of the visitors, who are connected to Wall Street financial companies and other businesses under enormous stress. They are now talking about canceling their visit down here because of the "atmosphere" around Thanksgiving.

They are hurt and offended. I'm afraid this has damaged our relationships! They have always been kind and generous with us and we are overdue in reciprocating. That's one thing that really hurts me about this, but I'm not the one who did the inviting and started the manipulations. We can't really reciprocate when we are snowed under.

If you're going to invite people down and invite them to somebody's house for Thanksgiving, shouldn't you at least talk to the "designated" host and hostess first?

I don't understand how having healthy boundaries and minding my own business could create such a ruckus.

Righting a Book

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