Tomorrow, tomorrow...

I'm sitting in my garden enjoying the sunshine before the inevitable Bank Holiday wash out. I should be working - there is The Novel, all loaded up into Scrivener and ready to go. I need to revise that horror story I wrote a few months ago and send it out to magazines. And there's a really big, prestigious short story competition that I want to write something new for. So plenty to do, but I'm not doing any of it. I haven't done any writing since signing off on the final version of my story for the 33 anthology. I've even been neglecting this blog. I am officially in a creative slump.

Procrastination is, of course, in my genes. My father invented 'just in time delivery' long before the Japanese applied it to their manufacturing industries. There was always something more pressing to be done - like decanting all the dry goods in the kitchen into identical containers, and then getting out the labelling machine (yes, you heard me, he owned a labelling machine), and labelling the containers, because now we couldn't tell what was where, what with all the jars being the same. In his dying days, I remember one of the fabulous Macmillian nurses we had handing over to her colleague one morning and saying: 'Watch out for this one - if you stand still too long he'll slap a label on you.'

I had a very,very long engagement - about five years, I think. But I was still woken at two in the morning of the day of my wedding to hear my father bashing out his wedding speech on the word processor.

I don't understand what procrastination is for. What evolutionary purpose does it serve? It never, ever helps to put something off. I always feel better when I finally get around to doing that one thing I've been transferring from one to-do list to another. I get the decks cleared and I swear I'm not going to let things get away from me again. And yet, within a week, I'll be going to bed every night with the weight of things undone bearing down on me, certain in the knowledge that I won't do them the next day either.

At least with other bad habits, there is usually some pleasure or short term benefit to be gained from indulging them (I'll give you a minute here to reflect on your own worst habit and why you're never going to give it up). With procrastination, there's no upside. So I hereby vow to you, dear readers, to stop procrastinating. Starting tomorrow.