By PJ Parrish

Well, gee, thanks a lot, Sue.

Yesterday, my cohort Sue Coletta here at TKZ posted a blog about overcoming procrastination.Click here to read. I am fighting with this lately because I have a short story due for an anthology and it’s not going well. Sue suggested that I am not just lazy or unmotivated. (Which, in truth, I often am). Sue blinded me with SCIENCE!

She wrote that there is a conflict raging in my brain, a tug of war between my prefrontal cortex and my limbic system. The cortex is sending a signal to my limbic system that says, “C’mon, it’s time to work.” And here I must quote from her.

Because your limbic system is like an unruly teen who seeks only pleasure and avoids pain or discomfort, it often returns a signal that says, “Let’s do something else that feels good right now.”

I feel much better knowing there is something to blame for sitting on my butt watching Project Runway reruns while my garden goes primal and my short story is on a time-out. But to cut me some slack, I’ve got a lot of life things goes on right now and am battling a lingering bout with that flu bug that’s going around. So when the going gets tough around my house, the tough…

Fold laundry. (I’m very good at this)
Do the Spelling Bee in the Times. (must get Queen Bee status!)
Lament the retirement of Tim Gunn
Kill fire ants. Which have created a Saharan lanscape in my sad garden
Go to Home Depot for Amdro but wander around the hardware aisle 14/15, where arcane fasteners and screws are on display like trinkets in a Casablancan bazaar. (Pictured below: a Hex Washer Head Self-Drilling Sheet Metal Screw. I can waste a half hour trying to imagine what this is for.)

What I am trying to say here is that I think there is such a thing as good procrastination. Some days, the mind just cannot focus on the real task at hand — writing.

Here is a truth about writing that I believe intensely:

To write well and steadily, you have to give yourself over to a fantasy world. You are the godhead of that world. You are creating the landscape (let there be English moors!). You are moving your population through time and space (the plot is dragging. Let’s have Moses part the Red Sea!). And most importantly, you are making your make-believe people breath and live on the page with such heart and agility that they feel real.  Do you guys realize how hard that is? Do you know how rare is it when it all comes together in a great story? To write well, you have to enter a rem state. You have to give in to vivid dreams, an increased heart rate, with your brain engaged and limbs a tingle. And you have to do this while being completely awake, aware, and preferably sober.

(I often watch my dog Archie when he’s asleep. He barks, twitches, yips and lollops his legs. I watch him with envy, wondering what great stories he is creating in his mind.)

I know many of you are disciplined and dogged in your writing schedules. You write every day, no matter what. Some of you keep diaries of your output. You embed yourself in your fantasy world and stay there for hours. I can’t do that. I have tried, so very very hard. But it just isn’t how I roll as a writer.

When I was writing novels full-time, I had to force myself to write every day because I was on a contract to produce a book every 8-10 months. But I confess that for me, staying in that rem state every day was exhausting. At times, I even resented it.

So I learned to take breaks. I learned how to procrastinate productively. Mainly through physical activities like running or biking. Or sometimes just watching old movies. Or I just fold laundry. My mind clears and I go back to writing with an open heart. Sometimes I take a break for a day or two. Sometimes it runs a whole week. But here’s the weird thing…

Whenever I leave my story, I can always feel this thread keeping me bound to it. Even when I am away from writing, I feel a subconscious connection to it.

The idea of a string connecting worlds and people is common in myth, literature, and most religions. The astral cord, or “silver cord,” is a metaphysical concept describing a luminous and indestructible tether connecting the physical body to the astral body (soul/consciousness) during out-of-body experiences, sleep, or astral projection.

Allow me one final digression.

Cinema Paradiso is one of my favorite movies. It is about a boy in a tiny Italian village whose beloved father figure Alfredo tells him to leave the village to find his way in the world. Never come back here, Toto, he says. At the movie’s end, the grown Toto returns to his village for the first time for Alfredo’s funeral. We don’t see Toto greeting his elderly mother. To track the reunion, the camera focuses on her knitting needles and yarn. As the mother heads downstairs to meet her son, we see the yarn unraveling and then it stops. The camera pans left to the window as they embrace. The thread between Toto’s two worlds is fragile but unbroken.

So it is with me. Yes, I procrastinate. But I am always pulled back. Sometimes it feels heavy like a good rope, pulling me back up from the depths. Sometimes it feels flimsy, like a kite string, ready to snap when some hard life wind blows through. Sometimes it feels like a cord through which some electric current pulsates.

But it is always there. I am away from my fantasy world but I am always tethered to it.