Procrastination as a Rarefied Art Form

A brief excerpt from my new humor­ous mem­oir,
com­ing out this fall:

photo_3I can’t speak for all blocked writ­ers, but when I’m blocked, I seek out con­flict with peo­ple and insti­tu­tions, and I chan­nel my cre­ative ten­sion into dis­trac­tions, rais­ing my pro­cras­ti­na­tion from writ­ing to a rar­efied art form. Over the past 25 years as a writer, I have man­i­fest­ed my writer’s block in count­less ways. I have tak­en day-long, mean­der­ing car rides, and, if anoth­er driver’s dri­ving has annoyed me, I have fol­lowed that per­son for hours, across state lines in some cas­es. I have researched pen­cils, going so far as to inves­ti­gate what became of the lead for­mu­las of supe­ri­or brands that no longer exist.

generic-booksale I have vis­it­ed my library’s used book sale and stolen back books that I donat­ed because they didn’t put the books in their col­lec­tion like I asked them to. I have also stolen copies of my own books from library used book sales, when I’ve dis­cov­ered they were copies I inscribed to spe­cif­ic read­ers, and the read­ers hadn’t val­ued them. I have start­ed nation­al cam­paigns to boy­cott can­dy bar com­pa­nies when they changed their pack­ag­ing from tra­di­tion­al paper and foil to Mylar. I have writ­ten rants on social media web­sites, about pol­i­tics or Amer­i­can his­to­ry or Eng­lish gram­mar, or some­times about social media itself. I have writ­ten let­ters to the edi­tors of dai­ly news­pa­pers, or pre­tend­ed to be a col­lege stu­dent and writ­ten satir­i­cal pieces for col­lege news­pa­pers. I have savored after­noons drink­ing beer in bars with names like “Hur­ri­cane” and “Ice House,” flirt­ing with attrac­tive female bar­tenders, watch­ing soc­cer (which I loathe) and cor­rect­ing the gram­mar of men who speak rude­ly to the wait­ress­es. I have feud­ed with a local thrift store because they refused to exchange a $3 den­im shirt I’d bought that didn’t fit me.

1024px-joe_lieberman_official_portrait_2I have called the office of Con­necti­cut Sen­a­tor Joe Lieber­man and argued with his under­lings about his poli­cies, even though I am not now, nor have I ever been, a res­i­dent of Con­necti­cut. I have invent­ed an alter-ego, Dako­ta Perez, and per­suad­ed small-town jour­nal­ists to write arti­cles about “my” exploits.

aston-martin-v12-vanquish-08The Ger­man Chris­t­ian the­olo­gian and philoso­pher Meis­ter Eck­hart said that God gives to each one of us what is best for him. I believe this is why God has not giv­en me a sil­ver Aston Mar­tin V12 Van­quish, nor a bour­bon-drink­ing 25-year-old mis­tress in the form of “red-head­ed, deep-breast­ed, slen­der and indo­lent” Claris­sa from John Cheever’s sto­ry “The Chaste Claris­sa.”

downloadGod knows that nei­ther the Aston Martin’s 568 b.h.p., nor the deep-breast­ed red­head reclin­ing lan­guorous­ly in the pas­sen­ger seat with a bot­tle of Maker’s Mark Ken­tucky Straight Bour­bon in her lap would be best for me. Not at all.

And if I had writer’s block at the same time? For­get about it. I wouldn’t self-destruct; I would spon­ta­neous­ly com­bust.

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By Chris Orcutt

CHRIS ORCUTT is an American novelist and fiction writer with over 30 years' writing experience and more than a dozen books in his oeuvre. Since 2015, Chris been working exclusively on his magnum opus. Bodaciously True & Totally Awesome: The Legendary Adventures of Avery “Ace” Craig is a 9-episode novel about teens in the 1980s. It’s about ’80s teens, but for adults (in other words, it’s decidedly not YA literature), and he’s applied this epic storytelling approach to the least examined, most misunderstood, most marginalized narrative space in American literature: the lives and inner worlds of teenagers.

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