The quote is from Pee Wee’s Big Adventure, and it has nothing to do with anything. I just watched the end of that movie and remembered how much I love it. My fantasy author photo is me screaming Pee Wee-style holding two fistfuls of snakes.

Anyway this post is about procrastination. And edits. But mostly…procrastination. Because I have to come to its defense. Procrastination gets an enormously bad rap. Tell someone you’re a procrastinator, and they look at you like you’re an unsavory breed of bug. You’re a layabout! Their expressions scream. A useless bug-type thing who can’t be depended on to meet any deadline! If they happen to be a Type A personality (like one of my very dear friends who shall remain nameless. You know who you are, to-do list Nazi) they might hit you a little. But here’s the thing:

When you procrastinate, a lot of stuff gets done. Take, for example, the procrastinating of edits. Edits for GIRL OF NIGHTMARES just hit my inbox a few days ago. They’re great. Sometimes you get those edits that make you weepy, or that force your living mates to hide the stemware, but these are not those. These are the kind where you just have an odd sense of shame, like you should have put those scenes in already and can’t quite understand how you could have been so inept in the first place. The point is, I’m not dreading them. Doesn’t stop me from procrastinating.

During my day of procrastination, I’ll do anything and everything that I can possibly think to do to avoid doing the edits that I’m not dreading doing. Make sense? Of course not. But that’s what happens. So today, I answered emails, did interviews, did the butt-butt workout, washed an apartment’s load of dishes, prepared a few meals, caught up on some very important TV watching, took a French lesson, paid some bills and did some snail mailing. Even this blog post is part of the procrastination process. And what a productive, productive process it is.

So go ahead. Procrastinate. Watch the way your desk clears. And then….don’t forget your deadlines.