Authors Electric

I sometimes swear I'm caught up in some kind of bizarre Dr Who -style time-bending experiment. I don't know what's happened to the space-time continuum, but it just doesn't seem to be functioning as it once did. I can remember a time when the temporal gap between one Christmas and the next lasted for about - well, about twelve months, actually: twelve long, glorious months that were stuffed full of exciting possibilities. Now I sometimes wonder if it's even worth packing away the festive decorations; before I know it, it'll be time to put them all back up again. Time is a peculiarly elastic thing. When you're miserable, or trapped at a particularly dreary social event, or waiting for a delayed flight, it hardly moves at all. When you're actually doing something enjoyable and/or worthwhile, like writing, it zips by. Hardly seems fair, does it? This problem becomes even more striking when you're trying to forge a career (I use the term loosel...

Almost a year ago, I wrote about overcoming writer's block . I had intended to write about procrastination the next month, but I kept putting it off until I didn't have time anymore, so I picked a fight with Ruth Graham that was about as successful as the one I picked with John Green . I tried to tackle procrastination again the next month, but instead I preached to the choir again about the benefits of self-publishing . Each month something else until finally, my procrastination reached epic proportions by convincing me to embark on a six month journey counting ten books . This month, I say, "No more!" This month I am going to tackle that tiger headlong. This is it. This is the month, I discuss the evils of procrastination and give advice on tackling it. [add witty caption later] Procrastination is a sneaky bastard. We all think of it as just putting off important work, but it is so much more than that. Sur...