Late Blooming

"Writing is 90 percent procrastination: reading magazines, eating cereal out of the box, watching infomercials. It's a matter of doing everything you can to avoid writing, until it is about four in the morning and you reach the point where you have to write." - Paul Rudnick


Reading is one of my favorite aspects of vacations, especially reading on a plane. Every once in a while, I will read something compelling—even potentially life changing—which happened to me on my way home from Costa Rica. Reading Late Bloomers in a collection by Malcolm Gladwell (found in What the Dog Saw) felt like I was being hit by hope in the form of a two by four.

Gladwell writes about discovering our gifts late in life, exemplified by Ben Fountain, a real estate attorney who gave up his practice in order to write. Fountain worked at his craft for years before success set in. He writes every day from 7:30 a.m. until lunchtime, then breaks for awhile and returns for a few hours before quitting for the day. In other words, he structured his writing as if it were a job, which in his case (and in mine), it is.

So this morning, fresh from vacation, I decide to start my work day earlier—at 7 rather than 9. I get up, brimming with enthusiasm and determination, and before I know it, I am balancing the checkbook, doing laundry, and checking my emails. In other words, I got distracted.  For me and other writers, distraction is like deciding to stop in Miami on a trip from San Francisco to Seattle, and then forgetting about Seattle. My ability to sidetrack my writing is my biggest problem, because once I am on track, I am unstoppable. Ditto for once I am off track.

So today, I state publicly my vow to bloom. Monday morning at 7 a.m. I start my new book.