Procrastination Creations

So you're sitting there looking at the deadlines looming on whatever time-sensitive projects you have at the moment. Whether these are Vocal challenge entries, unofficial challenges, or other things.

A sensible person organises themselves and thinks, "I must check my older stories to find those that fit the Unhappy Endings and also write out the new stories in my head I want to put forward. That's even before I sort my second apology or tackle After It's Gone..."

Does Paul Stewart do that?

Does he fuck.

Instead, he looks at the deadlines and then, if the mood is right—and by right I mean wrong, the moon is particularly bright and bold, and there's a scent of swollen waste pipes and the harassed quacking of several sorry ducklings and their depressed mother—he decides that now might be the time to write a poem about fleas and creativity and monsters, or a response to the latest LC unofficial challenge that uses the opening line to Here Comes the Sun by The Beatles. A story that is as horrifying as it is barmy.

So I procrastinate.

With style.

I make procrastination an art form.

Procrastination Creations is what I've taken to call them now.

Top stories, challenge entries—both official and unofficial—and some of the best-loved pieces in my body of work were complete accidents.

Whenever I should be working on something else—usually something vitally important, like the Horror challenge inspired by slasher films that Vocal are running right now, one that is completely up my street—I have the ideas locked in. At least a couple of strong ones.

Have I written them yet?

Nope.

Have I fuck!

Whenever I try, I come undone emotionally, creatively, and even physically sometimes.

The twitch is real.

But I have always said I don't have writer's block, ever. I usually just switch to one of the many other projects I'm working on whenever I get stuck on one.

It has kept me on the right path for the years I've been writing fiction, poetry, and the smatterings of other pieces I write. Pieces like this.

This, in itself, is a Procrastination Creation.

Although I would very much like to get on with the various pieces that are pending, do I hate my penchant for Procrastination Creations?

Do I fuck!

They help ensure I write regularly and have given birth to some of my favourite pieces.

Without Procrastination Creations, where would I be? I’d finish pieces long before their deadline, but, wouldn’t have classics like:

Still Living: Flesh Tithe - Ekphrastic (Excerpt)

That takes inspiration from: The Ghost of a Flea, William Blake

Art thou the itch I scratch?

It breeds

under my skin, under my skin

#

For if I were the flea,

I would have agency

over the blood,

#

But if it is true

I am the itch:

scratch me,

dig deep,

#

Still living

That didn’t come from discipline. That came from me avoiding something else.

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Thanks for reading!

This unsolicited advice was brought to you by Paul Stewart, poet and writer.