By nature I am at my best when deadline driven. I make my framing customers very nervous as I work to a down-to-the-hour pickup of a finished piece. Most likely it is just a learned response to my dominant procrastinator traits, although at buying and storing food in bulk for a year ahead I am a genuis.
And in writing, my essays and papers always come together in the end. All I need is that opening line a day at least ahead (although Graves’ "Goodbye To All That" would be the single outstanding exception that nearly made me lose my mind and would not have been turned in had I not started it weeks ahead).
But now I’ve got a 5 o’clock deadline to find an ending to a story that I wrote last year. It has been thoroughly reworked accorded to professional editing by the aforementioned good professor, and I’m hung up about three pages from the end, needing to rewrite the entire dramatic climax and a tenuous resolution. Shall I wait till 3 o’clock to begin?
It’s never been so strong a temptation to stick "Still Life" in the CD player of this computer.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology