Procrastination Games

Why yes, that is an eyeball balanced on my wedding ring, sitting on my laptop. And in the background, you can see my attempt at creating a color-coded spreadsheet representing my characters’ motivations throughout the course of the novel.

In the past few years, I’ve seen any number of writers — both professional and aspiring — lecture each other on the dangers of the internet. It’s a terrible time suck! they cry. Every second you spend blogging or tweeting or watching videos of people popping zits is a second you’re not writing, and therefore another second of distance between you and the fulfillment of your literary dreams. Do you think Tolstoy wasted time googling random obscenities?

Probably not. But while some writers really can sit down and write for six hours straight, I don’t think that’s necessarily an achievable goal for most of us, internet or no. The web may be a time-wasting device of awe-inspiring power, but a true procrastinator has no need of such crutches. Why, I remember before the internet even existed, when I used to play solitaire (with actual cards!), watch old tv-shows in syndication until I could recite them, unravel blankets with loose threads, or, when all else failed, simply stare blankly into the middle distance.

I’ve spent a lot of my life beating myself up for these habits. How could I have failed to complete that chemistry homework? Why didn’t I leave myself more than three hours to write that paper? How many novels might I have completed in the time I spent constructing dioramas out of happy meal toys?

The thing is, I’m starting to wonder if all that procrastination doesn’t serve a greater purpose. Especially when it comes to something like writing… sometimes it needs to be forced, but maybe sometimes it needs to be ignored for a while in favor of something willfully unproductive. Don’t get me wrong — if you never sit down to write, well, nothing is ever going to get written. But if you’re an incorrigible procrastinator like I am, you might at least console yourself that your unconscious might be doing important work back there while you demolish your high score at tetris.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 3rd, 2010 at 10:54 pm and is filed under writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.