Frittering

There are too many hours in the day, and I sometimes fritter them away. When I haven’t enough to do, I do even less, often spending my available time on activities that accomplish nothing more than fill time. Word games. Card games. Reading the Wikipedia entries for obscure rock ’n’ roll bands.

I find I accomplish more when I have projects with deadlines I can segment into discrete, definable tasks. I’m not an adrenalin junkie, spurred to action by last-minute rushing to meet deadlines. I like projects with far-away deadlines so I can compartmentalize each step, accomplish each step, and know that with each completed step I’m that much closer to meeting the deadline.

For example, for many years I was a regular contributor to the now-defunct confession magazines. I knew each month’s submission deadlines and, because I often wrote stories tied to holidays and seasons, I could plan ahead to know which stories to complete and when to submit them.

Writing to invitation, or writing to meet an open-call deadline, is similar. I know the submission deadline, so I work step-by-step: Generate several ideas, research (if necessary) to refine the ideas, winnow the unworkable ideas until only one remains, draft the story, edit or revise as necessary, and deliver it to the editor. Without that deadline, I fritter my time away.

But frittering around isn’t inherently bad. Sometimes it means washing dishes, doing laundry, paying bills, or, as I have the past few days, going through my file of unsold stories to see if any fit, or can be made to fit, anthology calls or the requirements of new (or new to me) publications.

I’ve also found a way to direct my frittering: I leave a list of non-writing/non-editing tasks on the kitchen table so that each time I pass through the kitchen I see something that needs to be done. (Temple has noticed this daily list and now often adds tasks to it.)

I approach tasks on the list the same way I approach writing to deadline: in discrete steps. For example, when putting away laundry, I might fold and put away towels, then an hour later deal with T-shirts. The process might appear messy (and it may actually be messy) but I usually meet my daily deadlines. The laundry is folded and put away, the dishwasher emptied, the bird bath filled, and the plants watered, all before Temple returns home from her day job.

In the spaces between these tasks, I’ve written a page on this story or a paragraph on that story, or I’ve made notes on a third story. In this way, I continually make progress on writing and editing projects that have no specific deadline.

And, sooner or later, a project with a deadline will land on my desk, I’ll have less time available to fritter away, and—for a while, at least—I’ll postpone my visits to the Wikipedia pages of obscure rock ’n’ roll bands.

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“Schrödinger’s Blonde” appeared in Black Cat Weekly #202.

“The Safety Dance” appeared in Gag Me With a Spoon: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Music of the ’80s (White City Press, J. Alan Hartman, editor)

“Cowboy Up” appeared in KissMet Quarterly #2: A Serendipitous Summer (MM Publishing, G. Lynn Brown, editor)