How I Operate

Here's how I work it:

My mind riots with complaints and and woe-is-me visualizations all centered around the lack of time I get to write. I think about checking into a hotel. I think about running to some shack on some shaley mountainside in West Virginia to scriven to the strobe of a guttering candle. Ridiculous fantasies parade before my mind's eye: My son and wife weeping at my graveside, throwing skyward the pages of my latest manuscript which would have, could have been a masterpiece if only I'd lived to finish it! If only I hadn't died of overwork, broken down in the traces like an old mule.

Then, presto! I get a day to write. A whole day, how beautiful. And what do you suppose happens next? I screw around. I fritter. I procrastinate. Sand falls in the hourglass and still I postpone, I delay, I forestall...