Time for a touchy subject, Writer Friends. Procrastination. But not just any procrastination —  I’m talking about Life Procrastination. The kind of procrastination that takes years to perfect. You have to hone it, over decades of telling people you’re “working on a novel” (or whatever your unfinished life’s work may be) when you haven’t written any words since 1987, over weeks or years of turning on the computer and re-reading your old, half-finished files, thinking “I should finish that piece” and then Stumbling instead. Or, Facebooking, or Flickring, whatever. Pick your poison.

First, let me say this: I am purt near out of judgment today. I’m not judging nobody, nothing, nohow. I spent almost my entire adult life bemoaning the fact that I didn’t have enough time/energy/material/chi/Muse to do my life’s work. I could have filled a swimming pool full of that kind of bullsugar, and had enough left over to frost the world’s largest Bullsugar Cake.

So understand this: I’ve been there. But not for quite some time. What changed? I got gray hair.

Yup, after gray hair, and kids, and some assorted physical complaints (my corns? my bunions! jk), I realized it was looking more and more likely that I would live and die a big fat What-If life, chock full of “I could’ve been a contender.” So I got off my a$$ and started writing. (Actually, I got on it, BIC-style. But you know what I mean.)

What brought this topic up? Recently, I had a couple of non-Writer Friends (who are very much where I once was) ask me questions.

Like “Don’t you get writer’s block?  I have terrible writer’s block. I’ve had it for, like, a decade. It’s debilitating.”

And “Do you think I should go get that writing degree you got, Nikki?* (When asked what this friend was writing, the answer was “Nothing.” When asked what this friend had ever written the answer was also “nothing. Yet.” Sigh.)

My answer to them both? Just Write.

With a pen, with a pencil, with a computer or a typewriter. With the bloody stumps of your zombie-gnawed fingers, for crying out loud, but just get some words on the freaking page! And stop thinking about it.

Also, stop checking Facebook every ten minutes. Your status isn’t going to announce “Fabulous MacWriter just finished her novel!” all by itself, now is it?

There. I feel better now. If that wasn’t enough chastisement (Hmmm… a reminder for myself as well? Maybe.) then visit THIS SITE and weep.

* Heck, no! It scared me away from writing for a decade! Um, kidding. Sort of.

I should probably be wary of taking song lyrics as blog posts — someone might think I had a delusion that this blog were fabulous like Betsy Lerner’s — but what the heck. I wanted to talk about writing books today anyway. Not the act of writing books, no. I mean books about writing, written for writers. (Procrastinating writers like me, who spend long hours poring over them instead of finishing manuscripts. Oops.)

I recommended Betsy’s The Forest for the Trees a few months back — an excellent book which I have since loaned out and, therefore, will never see again. (Which one of you Writer Friends has it? I can’t even remember. Ah, well. Que sera. It’s the Circle of (book) Life, or some such.) For my birthday this week, I received a copy of Jane Yolen‘s (on whom I have a humongous writer-crush) writing book called Take Joy: A Writer’s Guide to Loving the Craft.

I’m not even halfway through this book, but I can already tell you — I will NOT loan this one out to anyone. I’m going to need this one again and again. So hie thee to a bookstore and get your own darn copy. Why should you spend your money on this little, watermelon-colored book? She doesn’t say anything in it you can’t pick up from other books, from the Internet, or from your writing buddies over a few glasses of wine. There’s not that much new in what she says. But, oh, Writer Friends. HOW she says it.

Sigh.

So, in honor of Jane Yolen, tomorrow is a designated BIC day – Butt In Chair. I’m turning off the phone, leaving the dishes in the sink, avoiding the Internet like the plague, and writing. Nothing else.

Writing all day long.

Now THAT’S taking joy, if you ask me.

April is, as you are all no doubt aware, National Poetry Month. Many of my Writer Friends and Writer Acquaintances have very bold plans for the month, like writing a poem every day. Seriously. There’s tons of them doing it.

It makes me tired to think about this.

Because I love you (I do, I assure you, love every last one of my handful of readers) and do not wish to alienate you at this early, fragile stage of our e-relationship, I will not follow suit. I will, however, give you a very few nuggets of poetic gold and/or horse manure to ponder. You be the judge.

For today, please enjoy/disdain/mock/scorn/delight in the very first poem I ever had published (in my hometown newspaper, no less!), a copy of which is even now hanging on the wall of my nonagenarian grandmother, confusing anyone who stops long enough to read it. (You’ll see.) I wrote it when I was nine and had fallen hopelessly, haplessly in love with Miss Edith Hamilton and her wicked, wickedly thorough book of mythology. Norse, Greek, Roman gods, all with their similarly gleaming muscles, cruel appetites, and casually incestuous, forked family trees? She exposed them all to my wondering, innocent eyes. Ah, Edith! You ruined me.

Brace yourselves.

Apollo was the god of the sun,

Zeus the Father of All,

Aphrodite, the goddess of love:

Troy, Greece, a broken wall.

A war can kill so many,

but the will of Zeus decides

whch of the ages should live

and which should die.

A giant horse rolled in one day

and it would be his will —

Zeus destroyed near all of Troy,

all Trojan blood was spilled.

Voila, my literary debut, written years before I knew what a Trojan was.

I’ve written a few others since then. Who knows? With enough encouragement and a few dozen margaritas, I might post some of them here this month. If you show me yours, I’ll show you mine.