Writing your stories ... tomorrow.

The art of writing, said Mary Heaton Vorse, is the art of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair.
However, argues Amanda Leduc, for those who are truly skilled in the art of procrastination, this is not enough.
As Amanda has discovered, you’ll need more than just keeping your rear end on a chair to save you from modern-day distractions such as the dreaded Facebook!

You’ve made the decision

So you�ve made the decision: the writerly lifestyle is for you. Goodbye, nine-to-five cubicle � hello, free and easy life of the working artist. Hello, sleeping in until ten, bonjour to that corner caf� in the early hours of the afternoon. You�ve taken the step and cast off the shackles of traditional employment � you have the whole day in front of you to devote to paper and ink. You can spend hours writing, if you want. What fun! What freedom! What complete and utter joy!

So, Writer, get to it. Sit at your desk and pick up that pen. Bestselling novels/articles/scripts/poems/stories await, and all you have to do is write them.

Might want to make yourself a cup of coffee before you start, though. And make sure you eat � can�t churn out words on an empty stomach, after all. Oh � and maybe your desk needs cleaning � it�s been a while. (What happens if you lose chapters under that mess of old bills?) Come to think of it � your writing space is looking a little shoddy, isn�t it? Perhaps it�s time to break out the duster.

And hey � is that the phone? It could be your mum. You should get it � you haven�t spoken since, well, yesterday. Guess that story will have to wait a few more minutes. Or an hour � or two �

The art of sitting

The art of writing, said Mary Heaton Vorse, is the art of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair. Succinct, was Ms. Vorse. Succinct and to the point and � worst of all � secure in the strength of her words. She wrote 18 novels and published several volumes of poetry during the first few decades of the twentieth century. Apparently, applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair worked quite well for her.

But were Ms. Vorse here today, I might point out that the demands of twenty-first century life make writing a tad more difficult. Lady, I might say, ever so politely, I have lots going on. I�m a busy girl. I might show her my mobile phone, constantly ringing away, or trot her along to my nine-to-five cubicle job, because the �free� and �easy� (insert cynical laughter here) life of the working artist is not mine, not yet. And then, as my secret weapon, I�d turn on my computer and plug Ms. Vorse into the World Wide Web. There, I�d say, not a little smug. Applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair is nothing in the face of Facebook! NOTHING!

All of which is to say, of course, that Ms. Vorse had it exactly right. Ask any writer and they�ll probably list the act of writing as both their favourite and most dreaded activity. We writers are a curious breed; we spend any non-writing time scrambling to get back to the blank page, and then, once there, do everything we possibly can to avoid that very same expanse of white. We clean. We take long walks. We read other people�s books instead of writing our own, and call it �research�. We make up fantastic excuses.

Today, my excuse for not writing was the fact that I�d been in Edinburgh for almost a year and hadn�t yet seen the Royal Botanic Gardens. So I went. In February. Everything was varying shades of green and brown (big surprise) and I got lost on my way back, stubbed my toe rather harshly and limped the rest of the way home. Now I�m typing with my foot wrapped in ice and a towel and feeling rather sorry for myself, which means that the work on my novel probably won�t get done today. This despite the fact that the seat of my pants is rather firmly anchored to the seat of my chair. See? Excuses. We�re very good at them.

Cooking up a story

My preferred method of procrastination, injuries aside, is baking. My flatmates enjoy this � my waistline does not. But I�d much rather be baking bread than plotlines. (Perhaps I should have gone to school to be a chef.) And even then, even when I�m specifically avoiding my computer and my notebook, I think about the writing. I get nostalgic for it. I think fondly of my university days, when I had entire days at my disposal to hash out plot and dialogue and character. Man, I say to myself, wouldn�t it be great to have the entire day available to write? I�d get so much done. I�d write articles! I�d write umpteen stories, and ACTUALLY SEND THEM AWAY! I�d write seven novels in three months! I�d be a WRITING MACHINE

I would, in short, make very good use of my seat-in-chair position. In between all of the baking, naturally.

But a year ago, when I was finishing my Masters degree, I had time to do just that. It was summer in Edinburgh and I was destitute, jobless, and completing my thesis. The free and easy life — I had days in front of me with nothing to do but write. And what did I do? I slept in until ten. Then I made food. Then I went for a run. Then I came home and made more food. Emailed home, emailed friends, stalked various people/authors/books on The Web. Watched TV (curse you, Jack Bauer. Curse you!). Then, around four or five in the afternoon, when I�d begun to run out of activities, I would sit down and begin to write. And fifteen minutes in, I would go for a �break� and make myself some tea. And then I�d start my round of excuses all over again. The day would usually end around midnight, after � at most � three or four hours of productive typing. Three or four hours out of an entire day.

Somehow, it gets done

This is discouraging, but I take comfort in knowing that I�m not alone. Raymond Chandler, it is said, used to lock himself in an empty room for four hours a day. He had a notebook and his pen and did not have to write for those four hours, but he couldn�t do anything else. Eventually, boredom forced him to it. Charlie Kaufman tackled his own procrastination tendencies quite openly in Adaptation. (Should I make coffee before I start muses Nicolas Cage. Or should I write for a bit, and reward myself with coffee?) And Ernest Hemingway often lamented the fact that he could spend hours at a caf�, fiddling with his pen and his squillion cups of espresso, only to finally get into a writing groove and have it destroyed by a well meaning friend, inquiring after what story he was telling today.

But somehow, somewhere, the writing eventually got done. Raymond Chandler gradually got his novels out of those boredom-induced lock-ins. Charlie Kaufman got his screenplays. And Hemingway � we all know what came out of him.

My thesis got done too, eventually. Sooner or later, the desire to get the words down overwhelms the desire for excuses � if you really really love it, this strange, evasive way of life, sooner or later your stories will create a discipline of their own. Perhaps, one day, my devious procrastinatory ways will wither and die in the face of a Great Idea that sees me working like John Updike (up at eight, writing by nine, and by the end of his life had over twenty novels, a memoir, short stories, criticism, and several books of poetry to show for it) and numbering my words in the thousands a day.

But first, I should probably go and make myself a cup of tea �