Write the next chapter, or install a new mailbox? Hmm.

I
always want to be doing anything other than the thing I’m supposed to be
doing.   This is the impulse that drives
my productivity.   It’s why I have so many
irons in the fire, because there’s nothing like a fresh iron to take your mind
off the ones already in the forge.  

The
problem with working on the thing I’m supposed to be working on is it’s
hard.   It’s hard because people are
usually waiting for it to be finished by a certain deadline.     It’s much
easier to be working on something no one is waiting for, because no one but you
knows it’s being worked on.   These projects
are always my favorites.   They’re only
between me and my anonymous impulses.  
Since I always feel compelled to write stuff, this is a happy
state.   I get to do what I want with no danger
of pressure or reproach.   I think most writers
are the same way.  Procrastination yields
tremendous results.  There’s nothing like
a short story deadline to get a person out there in the garden transplanting
shrubbery, or calling up neglected relatives to learn how they’re doing, even
if the response is to wonder why the hell you’re calling them in the first
place.  The
urge to procrastinate is behind all my re-writing.   I tell myself I can’t possibly write anything
fresh, but I can always invest screen time going over existing material.   The result is very useful rejiggering, which often
stumbles into fresh composition, despite myself.  

I
don’t fear the blank page.   In fact, I
like it.     What I fear is hard work, which original
writing always is.   I know I can do it, since
so far I always have, though that doesn’t mean I don’t resist launching the
effort.   I feel the same way about
preparing my taxes or hauling out the trash.  
All past evidence proves I can do these tasks, and when I’m done, will
feel richly satisfied.      But getting started is a drag.   And since I’m an inherently energetic person,
I look for something else to do instead, like study the Ming dynasty or repaint
the living room.   

I’ve published 18 books
so far and written about 22.  Not to
mention all those short stories and essays. 
And written countless lines of commercial copy.  Enough writing to have cleared a few acres of Southern
pine and done some damage to my elbows and carpel tunnels. 
But I marvel at people like Isaac Asimov, who would wake up in the morning
and just write all day long, rolling his chair from typewriter to typewriter
writing several books, or scientific papers, simultaneously.  Did his fingers ever get tired?   The late,
great Donald Bain published 125 books. 
How many more did he actually write? 
How did he keep his elbows going?   Did
Asimov, Bain, and that other freak of productivity, Stephen King, feel drawn to
write because they were avoiding something else they thought they should be doing?   Origami?  
Cleaning out the garage?   Learning
French?

All
the best writing advice says you should sit down in front of the keyboard every
day for a subscribed amount of time and write something.   I never do this.   My subscribed amount of time appears willy-nilly,
often when I’m avoiding doing something else I really should be doing.   Suddenly, there I am, sitting down in front
of the keyboard.   This could happen at any
time day or night, any day of the week.   As
it constantly does.

Now that I’m done writing this, I’ll go split the wood that’s been calling to me.