Writing in the (UK) Guardian, A.L. Kennedy writes about the mammoth struggle against procrastination:
Writers can generate industrial quantities of procrastination before their first sonnet is rejected, or their first novel-outline-plus-sample-chapter is exorcised, burned and its ashes buried at sea. Are my pens facing north? Or magnetic north? What's that funny noise? Oh look, it's raining outside. My fingernails need cutting. I think my computer is going to break, better get it checked. Do I have toothache? Will I have toothache? The possibilities lend new meaning to the words eternity and purgatory. * * * Win or lose, you have to be in the game to play it and writing is a game which can deepen and enrich any player's experience, moment by moment. We can all feel we're not really up to it on any given day – and sometimes we're right, we should take a break. But not writing – that would be like not speaking, not touching, not kissing. Pauses are probably unavoidable, but perhaps use yours, enjoy them, shorten them until you can find their edge. We might look at it like this – kissing is good, but kissing after five or 10 seconds of well-informed waiting – that can be better. Onwards.
For all us procrastinators, the full piece is here.
Those with a philosophical temperament or at least the wish for same, may want to look at Chrisoula Andreou and Mark D. White, eds., The Thief of Time: Philosophical Essays on Procrastination (2010). There's an NDPR piece on the book here: http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=24231