Me, The Consummate Procrastinator

I am a procrastinator, a very good one, and I know that affects my writing life. I’m sure I could model how to become a procrastinator but is that a proper goal for an aspiring writer?

I have attended many weekend workshops, all day seminars, or weeklong conferences, and this year frequent Zoom meetings about writing in general and about nonfiction or writing poetry, in specific. I have collected (but not necessarily read) many books and magazine articles on writing. I definitely know how to GATHER INFORMATION or, more specifically in higher education, DO RESEARCH.

My background of notes and knowledge from all these events and articles has become legendary, most of which are still in my files. I have been an on-and-off writer so I have also begun a collection of interesting TITLES to work on, of OUTLINES or short drafts of books that might become manuscripts, of POEMS that might be child-friendly. I have listened to writers give advice such as:

1) WRITE EVERY DAY, EVEN IF YOU DON’T FEEL LIKE IT;

2) WRITE ABOUT ANYTHING AND EVERYTHING, JUST WRITE;

and 3) “BUTT IN CHAIR” JUST SIT DOWN AND WRITE.

I decided some time ago that I needed to stop going to all these meetings and just start writing…but I haven’t…yet. Well… I still need to do that.