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From the President's Desk

There You Go Again, Subconscious!

I am a writer who suffers with procrastination the way some people suffer with a bad back or hay fever, except I don't sneeze. Once I am several paragraphs in, the procrastination issue vanishes as though it never drove me to bake salted pecan brownies and mop the laundry room.

In fact, once there are a couple hundred words on the page, you would think I had never procrastinated on a writing project in my life. I am perky. I am a race-horse headed for the post.

If interrupted, I make every effort to seem normal and patient, but my gracious act fools nobody who knows me well. That's because once I'm writing, I tend to barrel through until I'm at a stopping point or finished.

When I'm writing, my family says they are safer, not to mention calmer, if we eat leftovers. They know my body may be at the stove stir-frying onions, but actually, I'm re-phrasing a troublesome transition. More than once, I have been caught staring into the distance, wooden spoon suspended mid-air, while dinner burned.

My sons still use these times to their advantage: "Mama, I'm headed out for a chocolate sundae and a new laptop. That OK with you?"

"Sure, sweetheart. You can use my credit card."

But that's when I'm writing. First, I have to get there.

The odd thing is, I'm not prone to procrastination in other aspects of my life. Well, maybe in tidying my office, but I have wondered if that itself is a procrastination device. Or a symptom? My desk and my office need to have the right amount of papers and books piled around. Clutter is cool, dust is not. The wood floor has to shine. If the equation doesn't balance, I can't write until I clean up, or clutter up.

I don't procrastinate on other tasks, even ones that are high on many folks' put-it-off lists. Thirty people to phone? I'll start this afternoon. My turn to clean the litter box? Done.

I should have started writing this morning. (Actually, yesterday morning. Or the day before that. But let's just talk about today.) There was this letter to produce, and also, I'm the teensiest bit late on a magazine story.

I enjoy the magazine and admire my editor, who is skillful, kind, and funny. The assignment—my idea—is a profile. I adore writing profiles. The word limit makes this one a healthy challenge, one that will force me to paint a vibrant word portrait of my admirable subject. When it's finished, I will read the story and think, damn, this is pretty decent! And I will be confident that my editor will react the same way.

I like what I do. Why then, do I work so hard at avoiding it?

Instead of going to my desk first thing, I did a little weeding in the vegetable garden, and transplanted some basil seedlings. Then I planted the lavender seeds I've had "wintering" in the refrigerator for a month.

There always are things that need doing in a house, and I found a few. I answered eight or nine ASJA-related emails. Then, I realized that an editor who was supposed to get back to me two weeks ago still hadn't done it. So I wrote her a funny email telling her she's like a bad date. "You love me up, then you don't call. You don't write."

I meant to make her laugh, but apparently I made her feel guilty. Within the hour she apologized like crazy. A sign she had procrastinated about calling me?

After that, I flipped through a motivational book by Tom Peters and my notes on the original topic of this letter. I really was going to start writing. A page in Peter's book declared, in all caps, "THE PATH TO EXCELLENCE IS TO HALT – NOW! – ALL UN-EXCELLENT STUFF."

Um. Like making myself an omelet with spinach and feta cheese? Then fixing a quiche and a lasagna? And looking for antique coral earrings on eBay? (Only for seven minutes.) Clipping two items from the paper, and writing myself a note about a possible story idea? Setting up an interview? Responding to a sixth-grader who wanted to know how many kinds of writers there are, how much they make, and what we study in college? Updating my personal address book, and my editor contact information spreadsheet?

All day I have been very, very productive. Just not at writing. I hate this. Procrastinating means I sometimes inconvenience people and always, I irritate myself. After supper, I begin writing. I just feel ... ready.

A good many of my writer friends say they procrastinate, too, but not always about the writing part of our work. Sometimes it's the marketing or research. However we procrastinate, we all berate ourselves while we're doing it, and swear to reform.

But should we? Some psychologists regard procrastination as a manifestation of disorganization or even, of laziness. For me, although it makes me feel unpleasantly out of control, there is an undercurrent of work to it. Especially when I'm on a complex project, I sense that my subconscious mind is sending me out on errands while it sorts the information I've collected and writes a first draft.

My husband is convinced that my writing procrastination is a psychic necessity for another reason. I grew up on newspapers, so to speak, with a daily deadline bearing down. Sometimes an editor would be sending a story to composition paragraph-by-paragraph as I hammered them out. No time to tinker. Write once, fast and well.

I have written stories while phones rang unanswered and colleagues shouted insults at one another. With dogs barking and small children howling and banging on my office door. (Daddy is there. Or the sitter is there. Mama doesn't come out unless someone is bleeding.)

Now, my wise husband observes, the only pressure I really have is the deadline, and even that tends to have some give—because my editors know my ways and put up with me anyhow. (If a deadline is immutable, they say so, and I come through. Otherwise...)

His point: I procrastinate to create the pressure cooker I need. It's that pesky subconscious again, making me put off writing until I'm feeling guilty and scared. Until I'm eleven hours, seven hours, three hours! from disaster.

I procrastinate, he argues, because it works for me. I don't write as well when I have oodles of time on my hands.

He may be correct. I don't know. When I have oodles of time, I don't write at all. I'm too busy procrastinating.

Do you have good news or money? Want to be more active in ASJA? Tell Salley: president_@-asja.org