On Procrastination

A friend of mine says that procrastinators (como yo) are closet perfectionists. She says we procrastinate because we don't want to do a thing if we can't do it perfectly - and no one is perfect. I've always thought of my penchant for procrastination as the result of some sort of inherent laziness, but I think I'm starting to see her point.

Witness, this blog. I wanted to do a redesign, but I couldn't get the images just right. So I stopped blogging altogether. Every time I thought about blogging, I'd think about that redesign I wanted to get done. Then I'd think about how the stupid images and stylesheets were such a pain in my ass, and then I'd go do something else because I didn't have 5 hours to spend on my blog right then.

Trouble is, I think I do the same thing with my writing. Hubby gave me Stephen King's On Writing for my birthday, and I was surprised to read that King did not map out his plots, do character charts, or make revisions during the first draft. There are all these things I keep thinking I have to do when writing, but maybe I don't.

I'm a compulsive re-reader. Every time I sit down to write, I reread my last few chapters. And then I find typos, sentences that are not quite right, and plot points that could use a tweak. Result: Half a dozen works-in-progress in which the first four chapters read like a final draft, and which bore me absolutely to death.

So my project for the week is not to write, or to blog, but to stop being so damned picky. I did the redesign. It took me 1.5 hours. I still can't ditch the 2 pixel gap above the header, or the 10 pixel gap below the footer, but damn it, this is good enough.

Ex-ProcrastinatorPerfectionist,
Bettie

P.S. Does anyone know how to get rid of those gaps? They really bug me.

P.P.S.
Number of corrections made to this post after Bettie hit publish: 4

Advantage: Perfectionism