How a writer avoids working on a deadline:

Has a stare-down with a chipmunk who’s climbed up the Tulip Poplar and is cramming as many sunflower seeds into his cheeks he can possibly fit. He sees you. You see him. The stare begins. You win when he runs away, but you feel silly about it and then hum softly to yourself as if it doesn’t matter.




Watches Rachael Ray chop garlic at the speed of sound while talking about her family while waving her hands around while shaking a pot of simmering meat while pouring EVOO while grinning that big ole grin. Feeling inspired, you go into the kitchen to prepare your feast and instead come away with a handful of walnuts, three grapes, fourteen almonds, a half container of yogurt, sixty-seven Hershey’s kisses, and forty-three thousand M&M’s.



You look out the door and the chipmunk is staring at you again . . . commence Round Two of stare-down. The chipmunk turns its back on you in disgust and you sigh. One of the grapes falls to the floor and you don’t care.



You write completely inane blog posts about how writers waste time and hardly feel ashamed of your lack of motivation and imagination at all, hardly, sorta kinda hardly at all. You kick the grape hard enough to burst the skin and your toe is sticky.



You flip the channel on the TV when the commercial that has that creepy hamburger King comes on and makes you go “ewww” but there’s another commercial with that really loud annoying brain-bursting-to-pieces-with-lots-of-blood-and-brain-guts woman touting rugs, and while flipping, you come across a segment on Black Holes and Dark Matter and become fascinated, yet distracted, and then lose your train of thought and then . . . then you . . . you . . .



The chipmunk’s cheeks are so huge, you can’t believe his face doesn’t explode. You stare with your mouth slightly open, and the chipmunk completely ignores you. This makes you feel as if you don’t matter. You cram M&M’s in your cheeks and the chipmunk looks at you in disgust. You yell at the chipmunk, “Whash your problem? Shtop shtaring at me! Get a life, geesh!”



Finally, you open up your word document and begin. And it feels good. It’s the best thing in the world. It’s all you ever really wanted to do . . . you just didn’t want to be told you had to do it; you wanted it to be all your own idea.


(this may be a reprint, then again, it may not be - it could be just something I wrote and never posted; I can't rememeber these things - my brain is bleeding from the blond rug woman commercial AUGH AUGH ARGH! . . . by the way, you may have noticed I am on a MWF schedule and am trying to be regular about Wednesdays being random linkages and/or photos day - MF I'll do whatever - I'm too chaotic...wheee!)