Procrastination

I told a friend in an email the other day, that I was suffering from 'procrastinitis'. Being an ex-nurse, she read that as 'pancreatitis' and was getting a little worried. Of course when she told me that, I immediately had to  head off to Wikipedia to find out exactly what pancreatitis was and while I was there, got a little distracted by all the other ailments listed with it. By the time I'd checked them out, I felt too ill to do any work.

That's how procrastinitis gets you. Every little thing suddenly becomes more important than what you know you're supposed to be doing. Even sweeping the floor and doing the ironing become more attractive than the task at hand. I know that on my two days off work during the week, I have two priorities - marketing my book and writing the next one. The proportion of time I tell myself I should spend on that is one-third marketing, two-thirds writing (I can top up the marketing in the evenings after work). Yet somehow, I find myself back on Twitter or the Kindleboards or washing dishes or even cleaning the bathroom, rather than writing. It's not that I don't like the writing, or don't like the story, so what's wrong with me?

Today I have done the shopping and put it away, I've checked out all the sites I need to look at (and then again, just in case anything exciting has happened in the past hour), added pages to my Treespeaker blog, talked to a few people on Twitter, Facebook etc, and written this post. And my book? I've written half a page. Half a page I will probably go back to and think, 'no, this is disjointed' and scrap. I have to get going with this book!

Is there a cure? Maybe it will tell me on Wikipedia...