Procrastination

I've always felt that it's quite unfair, the way writing works or doesn't work, atleast for me. There might be a week, or two weeks, that I simply have so much ideas, so much energy that it spills out and texts form almost without me. But then, just as easily, I might have weeks or even months with no inspiration, no feel for writing. After I started with my "write something everyday" system, I've written something almost every day. So far, I have forgotten to write anything on six different days in about four months. It's not a clean bill, but it is pretty close. The fact still remains, that my inspiration is both sporadic and clearly lacking.

"Hello, my name is Teppo, and I'm a procrastinator." (or is it procrastinationist? Be that as it may...)

In these four months I've written eleven complete short stories and almost a hundred poems or a sort of distillated thoughts. Not bad, right? I have also, however, started over two dozen (probably even three dozen or more, I didn't actually count them) of short stories and such, and have yet to return to any of them. The last month, especially, has been a slacky period for me. It's not that I don't write: it's that I don't write anything for real. Of course, since all I write is top drawer stuff anyway, I'm not sure how well "for real" applies. But the fact remains, I've written very little this past four weeks: one finished story, and one half-arsed start of a story. Everything else has been dabbling: a paragraph or two, a one-verse poem... Procrastinating is easy.

Take this blog: when I started I thought I'd write maybe once or twice a week. I still think I should write once or twice a week. But nothing's ever been easier than looking at the clock at half past ten in the evening and going "oh, it's that late. I'll do it tomorrow." Sure, you will. We've seen that already, haven't we? I've even saved some beginnings of blog posts into the drafts here, to finish them later. The oldest of those were saved a month ago.

I know only one definite cure to writer's block, procrastination or whatever you may wish to call it: pick up a pen or whip out the keyboard and write. I think it's the only one, really. Why is it so hard, then? Partially, I know, it's because I feel I have nothing to say. Last night, I was standing on the balcony, watching it pour, I mean really pour outside, like it was raining for a weeks worth, and I was thinking "this is really pretty in a melancholic way, I wish I could put this down on paper or something." And then I got stuck on the "how". How can I convey what it is to actually have the dark blue of midsummer nights edged by a real downpour: to see streetlights carve little white bubbles in the dampened midnight blue, the drops pattering on the asphalt and grass and rooftops and metal grilles and leaves, the total void of human and animal life out there in my absolute viscinity... I simply had no way of putting it all down, and I gave up and figured I'd just go to bed. Because procrastination is that easy. It's not like I didn't put down the major points of the effect just there.

I suppose I'd need more of a taskmaster than a gentle muse. Someone to really whip me to write. Looks like I have been able to whip myself only halfway so far.