Dogs and Bones

Well today I contemplated printing out my manuscript; but I’m afraid I didn’t get much further. It’s strange, as I thought I had conquered my procrastination tendencies—sent them packing, showed them the door, removed them from office and gave them their writing papers. Pardon? Oh, I thought it was writing? Okay, walking papers in that case.

I guess living a procrastination free life, is a bit like being released from prison. Suddenly, your free-time, actually becomes free-time, instead of the pretend version; usually spent feeling guilty about all the things one should be doing. There is also less post-procrastination suffering—the solitary confinement and anti-fun-having-straight-jacket-wearing—resulting from all those squandered hours.

I have been doing lots of other things, however. I say this to myself so that I don’t feel so bad—the convicted procrastinator’s defence—but really, I have been very productive. I’ve cleaned, sorted, practiced, read, cooked, arranged music, held concerts, taught and...spent a little too much time on instagram. Yes, I know. The error of my ways is becoming clearer.

But building an online presence is important for an author—or budding author—isn’t it? If only it wasn’t so distracting! I never thought I would say that. Only a few months ago I was sweating, and having nightmares over the thought of making a post, but it’s incredible how quickly I’ve become used to it...scary too.

And, I haven’t even been published yet.

Oh Agatha, if only I could be like you. You never seemed to fall into those traps. Your record on the productive scale seems significantly unblemished; but how did you do it, and so much of it too?

‘I don’t think,’ Agatha replies, looking towards the ceiling, ‘even then, I considered myself a bonafide author. I wrote things—yes—books and stories. They were published...but never when I was filling in a form and came to the line asking for Occupation, would it have occurred to me to fill it in with anything but the time-honoured ‘Married woman.’

‘Really? A married woman?’ I ask, thinking my work in that area, entails the odd bit of cooking and cleaning under a certain amount of duress.

‘I was a married woman,' said Agatha, 'that was my status, and that was my occupation. As a sideline, I wrote books. I never approached my writing by dubbing it with the grand name of ‘career’. I would have thought it ridiculous.’

‘Gosh,’ I say. ‘That really is surprising, and here am I thinking about building my author profile, before I’m even an author. I really do have it backwards. But, how did you do so much without thinking of it as a profession?’

‘I suppose I was enjoying myself so much in ordinary living that writing was a task which I performed in spells and bursts.’

I can probably do spells and bursts, I think. 'But you must have had some sort of routine? Or at least a special place to allow the creative juices to flow?'

Agatha shakes her head. ‘I never had a definite place which was my room,’ she says, ‘or where I retired specially to write. This has caused much trouble for me in the ensuing years, since whenever I had to receive an interviewer their first wish would always be to take a photograph of me at my work.’

‘Like this one?’ I ask.

Agatha nods. ‘All I needed was a steady table and a typewriter.’

‘Wow. Well you do look the part, I imagined that was where you sat for hours.’

Agatha laughs and shakes her head. ‘My friends have said to me, “I never know when you write your books, because I’ve never seen you writing, or even seen you go away to write.” I must behave rather as dogs do when they retire with a bone: they depart for an odd half hour. They return self-consciously with mud on their noses. I do much the same.’

‘Well,’ I say with a sigh, ‘thank you Agatha. I must stop procrastinating and you have given me a lot to think about.’

Dogs and bones included—especially the bones, for the third week in a row, as I know the skeletal structure of my manuscript is the most challenging to get in order.

Okay, time to stop procrastinating Agatha Bellsy. If my story is really criminally bad and requires serious rehabilitation, then so be it. And if it is just plain garbage, then perhaps I can give it to the dog—he seems to like books anyway.