Procrastination Tango

THIS WEEK I've got a number of things to do for the WGC and other projects that's going to make for a bear on my time. Originally I thought I'd lay fallow, but I've decided that I'm going to push links at you for the most part instead. Maybe your comments will be so scintillating nobody will notice.

First up is an article in yesterday's Toronto Star that does touch on the dirty little secret of writer procrastination -- that it's actually part of the process.

I read the entire Internet first," admits the Canadian poet Jennica Harper (What it Feels Like for a Girl). "I've discovered this is a problem for a lot of us. People used to start the day by reading an actual newspaper, which, while long, is finite. When your morning news comes via the Endless Tubes, it's harder to know where to stop. When is the news you've read `enough'? (A handy hint: Stop before you click any headline that includes the name Gosselin.)"

As far as avoidance insurance is concerned, more writers mentioned email and the Internet than any other temptations, and several offered strategies for avoiding even these: the cartoonist Seth, creator of George Sprott (1894-1975), packs his old manual typewriter off to a hotel room to write, Canadian novelist Annabel Lyon (The Golden Mean) and American author Joseph Kanon (Stardust) install themselves in a public library.

Some writers walk their dogs – excellent procrastination facilitators because they're so nakedly and urgently needy – while other re-arrange CD collections, play computer games, stare at deliberately unadorned walls or, in the words of the Scottish author Richard Holloway (Between the Monster and the Saint), "generally muck about."

Secondly, I managed to finish a script that I was deadly stalled on last week, while working concurrently on another project. And the way I did it was with little countdown timers based on The Pomodoro Technique. Now, I first read about the Pomodoro on somebody else's site, and lost track of whose. So if it was you, thanks. You kind of saved my butt last week. I don't know how it will continue to work, but for now, this has been a Godsend.

And that's all the time I've got today. Talk amongst yourselves.