The Writer's Guide to Procrastination

Step One: Go make a pot of coffee. A full pot mind you because if you’re in the middle of writing a great, spellbinding, spine tingling scene you cannot take that much time away from the computer to go make a fresh pot. That is known in writer terms as fooking with ze muse. She ain’t happy if you aren’t writing.

Step Two: Clean your office. You know that you will never be able to concentrate on the scene at hand if your office is not clean. (this step can take hours because you never file anything where it really belongs—that would be cheating)

Step Three: Sharpen every pencil you can find. Especially the red ones. A writer would much rather read their own red marks than an editor. Promise. This is a truth. (At least thirty minutes for this task due to the fact that the animals in your house use pencils—especially the red ones—for chew toys. This includes the cats)

Step four: Deciding whether to put on clothes before or after writing. This is very important. I know some people can write in the nude but they don’t live with my husband, who keeps the thermostat on sub zero temperatures.

Step Five: Locating the right kind of music. This is extremely important. This could actually take days to do. Every story must have the right kind of music. I mean it really wouldn’t do to be writing a fight scene to Barry Manilow’s Copa Cabana now would it? Can you imagine what kind of sword fight that would be? (Sorry Dakota I know how much you love Barry...)

Step Six: Organize your desk. You must make sure that all writing materials are present and accounted for on your desk. Sticky notes for those pesky little things you need to add to a scene or to remind yourself what color the hero’s eyes are anyway. Were they green or blue in the last scene? You wouldn’t believe how hard it is to keep up with such mundane details. But get it wrong and someone will slay you to ribbons for it. (Raising hand—Guilty)

Step Seven: Lock all the animals up in a sound proof room. This way when the dogs start howling and cats start meowing for supper you won’t hear them.

Step Eight: (This one is if you have children) Make sure your house is equipped with at least one DVD player, one play station two, a game cube, and at least four spare controllers. This way your lovelies will be occupied while you put on your headphones and try to pretend that you really don’t see your children trying to kill each other with a rubber chicken. Don’t ask...it’s still a painful thing to remember.

Step Nine: Turn the printer off and on at least three times. Check the printer ink just in case the stupid thing might happen to run out of ink before you finish printing off that prize winning manuscript. (Okay...a girl can dream can’t she?)

And finally Step Ten: Write a Journal Entry about how many things you do to procrastinate about writing. (Guilty again)