By Mary Anne Hahn Copyright 2000
A couple of weeks ago, I received the following joke from my friend Sue, who
also subscribes to this ezine:
Q. What do you call an aspiring writer?
A. A waiter.
As someone who loves words, and especially plays on words,
I found the
double-meaning in this little riddle particularly interesting-the answer
could either be referring to
"waiter" as a profession (i.e., someone who
waits on tables in a restaurant while working on his Great Novel),
or simply
"waiter" as a noun (someone who waits).
Are you an aspiring freelance writer? If so, what are you waiting for?
"I want to write children's books someday," my co-worker Wendy admitted at a
recent baby shower
we both attended. "I'm just waiting until my kids are a
little older." Will Wendy have more time "someday,"
once the kids are in
school, and have joined extra-curricular activities that send her scurrying
from soccer games
to piano recitals? Or is the time right for her NOW, while
her little ones by her own admission provide her with almost
daily
inspiration for books and stories? I think you know the answer.
If you've been thinking about writing someday, or writing more consistently,
what keeps you from doing so
now? Could it be, like Wendy, a perceived lack
of time? Or perhaps you are waiting until you've studied enough books
about
writing, have enough money in the bank to support your freelance dream
full-time, or get that new Pentium
III processor computer you've been
dreaming about. Maybe you've promised yourself that you'll start writing
regularly after you've set up the perfect home office, or you'd feel less
guilty about writing if you cleaned
your house first.
Regardless of your reason, and regardless
of how you justify it, the fact is
that you are simply procrastinating. To realize your writing dream, you need
to
write. To have a book written, an article published, a steady stream of
corporate clients or an ezine of your own, you
need to write today. Not
after the holidays, or after you've memorized all 1112 pages of the 2001
Writer's
Market. Now.
According to Dr. Kent Yamauchi at Virginia
Tech University, procrastination
"is letting low-priority tasks get in the way of high-priority ones." Now,
in Wendy's case, raising her toddlers certainly doesn't qualify as a
"low-priority task," particularly
since she also holds down a demanding
full-time job. But I'm willing to bet that if she examined how she spent her
days, she'd find that she spends enough time doing low-priority tasks
(watching television, for instance) that,
if she put it to use writing
instead, she'd be able to create her first children's book in fewer than six
months.
