24th May 2017

The Art of Procrastination

I looked at Facebook and Twitter. A fatal distraction. A tweet by another Irish writer, Jan Carson, took me to her blog post about putting books in order. The latter would be another fatal distraction for me. I'll load, unload the dishwasher, tidy drawers, even sort receipts for my tax return in order to avoid getting down to work on my sixth novel. How I ever completed the previous five is a mystery to me now. 

P.J. O'Rourke describes the writer's curse brilliantly. 
"Usually, writers will do anything to avoid writing. For instance, the previous sentence was written at one o'clock this afternoon. It is now a quarter to four. I have spent the past two hours and forty-five minutes sorting my neckties by width, looking up the word "paisley" in three dictionaries, attempting to the find the town of that name on The New York Times Atlas of the World map of Scotland, sorting my reference books by width, trying to get the bookcase to stop wobbling by stuffing a matchbook cover under its corner, dialing the telephone number on the matchbook cover to see if I should take computer courses at night, looking at the computer ads in the newspaper and deciding to buy a computer because writing seems to be so difficult on my old Remington, reading an interesting article on sorghum farming in Uruguay that was in the newspaper next to the computer ads, cutting that and other interesting articles out of the newspaper, sorting - by width - all the interesting articles I've cut out of newspapers recently, fastening them neatly together with paper clips and making a very attractive paper clip necklace and bracelet set, which I will present to my girlfriend as soon as she comes home from the three-hour low-impact aerobic workout that I made her go to so that I could have some time alone to write."

Add writing and copying the above to unloading the dishwasher......etc  You get the picture.