I have a degree in procrastination

Phillip gave me this book for my birthday: How I Write: The Secret Lives of Authors. I was pretty excited because for the most part I really love books about writing. (Stephen King's On Writing is my favorite in this genre.) I thought it would be about, well, how they write. Ah! I said to myself. Inspiration! Directions! A how-to manual!

Turns out it is more of a coffee table book, with pictures and photographs and large print and funky typesetting. The editor sent a bunch of letters to authors, the famous and the barely published, to find out what they use to, for lack of a better phrase, get in the mood. Jonathan Franzen, for instance, must be sitting in his squeaky chair. Another writer must have on his desk (surprise) beer and cigarettes. Other authors have postcards tacked to bulletin boards, one has an oversize desk, one has a special typewriter, one must be in a particular hotel.

I put it away until just recently. I ran out of copies of US Weekly to read while I'm nursing and there's nothing good on TV anymore (and oh my lands my beloved TiVo is on the fritz) so over the last few days I've been reading my coffee table book. The first thing I have learned is: People who write, like really really write, are a little tiny bit insane. The second thing is that: Maybe I CAN be one of these people!

Anyone who's dipped into the 'anxiety' archive on this website knows that I have obviously have the "insane" part covered, thank you very much. Even my own father, my own flesh and blood, told me that it was okay that I occasionally deal with extreme mental instability as "it's sort of required that creative people also be crazy." But I didn't know that what I have lately been calling "nesting" is also my way of setting up my writing space (which is, of course, one of the plethora of ways a writer procrastinates on writing whatever it is she is supposed to be writing. Also in this procrastination category would be: blogging.)

So anyway. Last weekend I got all bent out of shape because the pack and play! The baby no longer sleeps in it! IT MUST BE REMOVED FROM OUR BEDROOM! I was feeding the baby and Phillip was all, "Yeah yeah I'll take it down, don't worry about it" but of course he's lying there SLEEPING while I'm feeding the baby. So as soon as the baby is fed and burped I am up dismantling the pack and play and shooting rays of death at my husband oh wait... I am digressing! Okay. The pack and play was quickly taken down and packed up and hidden under the crib to wait until we spend entire days at Grandma's house.

But I wasn't done. See, back in the second trimester when we started contemplating the baby's room, we figured we could still keep our futon. I could probably still keep my little desk too. It'd be the baby/guest/Maggie's office room. YEAH RIGHT. The first thing to be kicked out was my little desk. We ended up getting rid of it and buying an even smaller desk (which I love, my heart belongs to the West Elm catalog) and wondering how we could fit it into our bedroom. We moved the bed from one wall to another wall, got rid of a dresser, scooched a few other things around and now I had three square feet of office space in the bedroom. Ta-da! (We ended up moving the futon down to Phillip's office and then we ended up selling it last month because who are we kidding. We are never going to have overnight guests again.) Our bedroom now has the Phillip's-bed-from-his-bachelor-days under the window, one West Elm desk, one Ikea dresser, one Ikea bookshelf and a Target particle board nightstand I bought before I was even through with college. This is not a grown up's bedroom. It is the last room in our house that still has craptastic college furniture. I've had framed pictures leaning against the wall for two years- TWO YEARS PEOPLE!- because I keep hoping that one day my bedroom will look nice and THEN I'll know where to hang the pictures.

After spending, oh, $5000 while thumbing through the Crate & Barrel best buys catalog (in our heads!) we finally decided that a new bedroom set or, at the very least, real nightstands, are going to have to wait until The Next House. For now we will keep everything as is because, as craptastic as the pieces may be, they are all fully functional and no one goes in that room anyway. But. BUT. I must have a cute workspace. A cute workspace equals a soothing creative inspirational place to sit and think, right? (Here you are all nodding your heads in unison. Go ahead.)

I cleaned all the remnants of New Baby off my desk. (You know what I'm taking about: Percocet, water bottle, Lansinoh, baby monitor, Mylicon drops, stack of burp rags and what I will simply call Docusate (thank GOD I don't need THAT anymore)). I dusted everything. (Ick.) I put everything not directly related to work, extracurricular projects, the church committee and thank you notes in the space I cleared out on the bookshelf. Time to write, yes?

NO! Turns out my desk sits in a corner where one wall is plain new house white and one wall is crazy we-own-a-new-house-let's-destroy-all-the-walls! lime green. The bed used to be up against the lime green wall where you could at least say the lime green wall was an Accent Wall. See how it provides a pretty backdrop for the matching duvet cover? But now that we've moved the bed under the window, the lime green wall is just kind of hanging out by itself. And completely bare, I might add, because the stupid homeowner can't make up her mind about where to hang the stupid pictures. GAH.

So here is my new idea, internet, and it is fantastic. I am going to find, somewhere, huge sheets of cork. You know, like a bulletin board that comes in a roll. And I'm going to cover the entire desk corner in CORK. Then I will have a gigando bulletin board to hold up all of MY writing talismans: my quotes clipped from newspapers, my favorite Dilbert comic, the laminated homemade bookmark from my best friend with the Bible verse on the back, the picture of Phillip on our honeymoon, my Hello Kitty keychain, the magnet another friend made for me eons ago out of construction paper. (And my hair cutter lady's business card, but she doesn't count.) Is this not an EXCELLENT idea? It is so excellent that I've been plotting how to make it happen instead of writing or working or sending out the updated roster for the church committee. (Which: WHATEVER. It's their own fault for nominating ME to be secretary.)

The cork corner doesn't really deal with the lime green wall issue, but I'm planning to buy some curtains to "pull things together". And hang the pictures. And maybe make my bed once in a while so I don't have a "my house is so freaking messy!" meltdown every time I walk into my own bedroom.

(Did I tell you I am hosting the moms group next week? Perhaps this is where the psychotic nesting thing is coming from, I don't know, but I seriously want to buy everything in the Crate & Barrel furniture department, like, tomorrow.)

And just so this doesn't veer off into a unpalatable essay on Ohhh I want to be a WRITER, if only I could just sit down and have the words MAGICALLY APPEAR kind of super obnoxious post, I will leave you with my favorite Dilbert comic. Ever. In the Universe. And there are some damn good Dilbert comics.

(Transcribed, because I can't find the actual comic strip:)

Dogbert the Publisher is sitting at a computer typing a letter.

"Dear Tim,

Your book does not meet our current publishing needs.

Your plot was lame and I hated your characters and by association, I have come to hate you too.

For safety reasons, I hired an illiterate person to rip up your manuscript. I would use the return envelope you provided but I'm afraid you might have licked the stamps."

Oh, and today's (8/15) Dilbert? HEE-LARIOUS.   

Comments

[Lindsay]

My dream since I was five (Yes. FIVE. Not kidding.) has been to be a writer. In fact, everything I'm doing is geared unto that purpose, even grad school (You know, should I be accepted. Please, please, please.). It makes me insanely excited about my possibilities for a professional career, and that's not even counting when I actually get to write a book. I actually have 3-4 book ideas rolling around in my head, but I'm not in a position in my life to have the time to be able to start on any of them. Boo. Imagine carrying these ideas around for a few years and not be able to do anything about them but plan. DRIVES ME CRAZY. Anyway, I was intending upon replying to this to tell you that King's book also happens to be my favourite book on writing as well. Though, as with anything, there were things in there that I clearly disagreed with, but that is ok. (I've learned that it's best for me to just not read these things, because the intuitions that I have tend to always be true and then I realise that I spent precious time reading a book on writing when I could be reading a great classic.) This is a really incoherent comment, isn't it? Ooook, and I'm done.

[Angela]

Oh yes, I sat down to write the other night, but then I had to check my email first, and then there was a Google ad about The Hills, and I was like, hey, what's on tv? And I turned it on and flipped around and OMG it was a Newport Harbor/Super Sweet 16/The Hills lovefest for the rest of the night.

Then at about one o'clock in the morning I typed a really shitty paragraph and then went to bed feeling satisfied with myself that I had actually done some WRITING. Ha!

[Christina]

wait, blogging is procrastinating? Dang, I've been telling myself that blogging is keeping me in shape to be a writer! I feel like my life won't be complete if I don't write an actual novel but these days I'm happy if I can write a decent blog post... I think it's awesome you are setting up a writing corner! Go you!
And I totally get the Crate n Barrel thing, everytime we have guests I want to buy out Pottery Barn. :-)

[E.]

I love, love, love the cork wall idea and have been contemplating doing the same thing over my desk. We do have a big cork board haging over my girls' desks (yes, well, we home school, so they have desks). And, yeah, most really successful writers are at least a tad mental, so I've always been torn between wanting to be a really good writer and wanting to be a really sane person. Which to choose, which to choose?

[Megan Elizabeth]

If being a slightly insane is the only requirement for being a REAL WRITER, then I should get published any day now...

...that is, if I can stop procrastinating and actually finish one of the 200 novels I have floating around in my head.

My environment: Nobody may walk behind my chair, talk to me, or attempt to touch me while I am writing. (What is it about sitting at a desk, clattering away with 4 fingers, that makes people want to walk up and hug you? Thus completely shattering the Mood.) Yet I cannot write when I am sitting all alone in an empty house. I get lonely. So, my ideal writing environment is to have someone quietly-but-audibly puttering in the next room. Now if I can get my family to cooperate...