The Criminality of Procrastination

I recently read something from Fran Lebowitz when I was trying to procrastinate on my own writing that called me out on my procrastination and made me realize that most of procrastination is a self-made emotional problem.

"Not writing is more of a psychological problem than a writing problem. All the time I'm not writing I feel like a criminal. ... It's horrible to feel felonious every second of the day. Especially when it goes on for years. It's much more relaxing actually to work."

Often procrastination is not about writer's block or even too much work, it is about an emotional block. I sometimes like to call that the Twitter Block. Simple ways to distract yourself from writing in this fast-paced, social media world with Twitter and Facebook and Instagram as an avoidance of dealing with characters or the way a story is unfolding.

The problem with giving in to that procrastination and finding ways to distract you away from your writing is that it does feel almost criminal after a while.  You start to feel bad about not writing but not enough to stop the procrastination until it feels almost "criminal" as Fran Lebowitz described.  Your fingers being to ache to hold a pen, your brain starts to move a million miles, jumping from topic to topic, idea to idea, character to character. All trying to push you and pull you and get you to just sit down and WRITE!

Then, when you feel you can't take anymore you shut off the computer, you turn off the TV, you close the distractions in your mind and you sit down. You sit down and take up your pen and put it against the paper and the words start to pour out of you. You feel the movement of the pen and hear it pass over the page in a noise so familiar to your ears it is like comfort. Pages and pages fall to the side filled with the progressing story and the interesting lives of your characters.  You stop only when your hand begins to hurt and your brain, energized by the release of ideas, begins to tire from the constant motion of the story. 

Finally, you lean back in the chair and feel yourself give a sigh. That procrastination feeling has gone, at least for this day, and the constant whisper in your ear to write has been silenced.  You are no longer the criminal procrastinator and you feel a bit at peace with the idea that the writing police you imagined tracking and chasing you with each tick tock of the clock as you ignored your writing, they have now been satisfied. No more writer's jail for you only writing.  It is amazing what pressures a writer puts on themselves.  They become their worst enemies when they know they want to or need to write and yet find ways to sabotage themselves.  A creative mind is always moving.  It is trying to make sure it is moving towards productivity and not procrastination that may sometimes be a challenge.  To that, as I have fallen into this trap many times myself, I offer only this one piece of advice...

Stop, Breath, Write!