{"id":7630,"date":"2017-07-08T02:18:16","date_gmt":"2017-07-08T02:18:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/?p=7630"},"modified":"2017-07-08T02:37:37","modified_gmt":"2017-07-08T02:37:37","slug":"procrastination-as-a-rarefied-art-form","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/procrastination-as-a-rarefied-art-form\/","title":{"rendered":"Procrastination as a Rarefied Art Form"},"content":{"rendered":"

A brief excerpt from my new humorous memoir,
\ncoming out this fall:<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"photo_3\"I can\u2019t speak for all blocked writers, but when I\u2019m 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\u2019s block in countless ways. I have taken day-long, meandering car rides, and, if another driver\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\"generic-booksale\" I have visited my library\u2019s used book sale and stolen back books that I donated because they didn\u2019t put the books in their collection like I asked them to. I have also stolen copies of my own<\/em> books from library used book sales, when I\u2019ve discovered they were copies I inscribed to specific readers, and the readers hadn\u2019t 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 \u201cHurricane\u201d and \u201cIce House,\u201d 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\u2019d bought that didn\u2019t fit me.<\/p>\n

\"1024px-joe_lieberman_official_portrait_2\"I 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 \u201cmy\u201d exploits.<\/p>\n

\"aston-martin-v12-vanquish-08\"The German Christian theologian and philosopher Meister Eckhart<\/a> 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 \u201cred-headed, deep-breasted, slender and indolent\u201d Clarissa from John Cheever\u2019s story \u201cThe Chaste Clarissa<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"download\"God knows that neither the Aston Martin\u2019s 568 b.h.p., nor the deep-breasted redhead reclining languorously in the passenger seat with a bottle of Maker\u2019s Mark Kentucky Straight Bourbon in her lap would be best for me. Not at all.<\/p>\n

And if I had writer\u2019s block at the same time? Forget about it. I wouldn\u2019t self-destruct; I would spontaneously combust.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A brief excerpt from my new humorous memoir, coming out this fall: I can\u2019t speak for all blocked writers, but when I\u2019m 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 … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":7636,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,3,75,7,76,13,14],"tags":[344,346,94,347,348,111,155,349,351,343,104,350,345,221,93,352],"class_list":["post-7630","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chris-orcutt-books","category-craft","category-memoir","category-personal","category-process","category-writers","category-writingexperiences","tag-aston-martin","tag-bourbon","tag-chris-orcutt","tag-joe-lieberman","tag-makers-mark-kentucky-straight-bourbon","tag-memoir-2","tag-orcutt","tag-pencils","tag-procrastinating","tag-procrastination","tag-redheads","tag-road-rage","tag-vanquish","tag-writers-life","tag-writing","tag-writing-memoir"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7630","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7630"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7630\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7645,"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7630\/revisions\/7645"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7636"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7630"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7630"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7630"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}