Metro Pulse/Midpoint

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by Stephanie Piper

Thoughts at the 11th Hour

If I put this off long enough, there's an outside chance I may not have to do it at all.

It could happen. Someone from Metro Pulse could actually call me and tell me that the printing press is damaged beyond repair and that there will be no paper this week.

An earthquake could level downtown Knoxville, neatly eliminating any need whatever for an October Midpoint.

Or an irate reader who hated my last effort could threaten the entire Metro Pulse staff with serious bodily harm if another word of my copy appears. Sorry, the editors will tell me. It's a risk we can't afford to take.

Believe me, I understand. These things happen. Listen, no hard feelings, OK? I'll just hold on to this until you're ready.

And maybe it will take a really, really long time.

I hate to write, wrote Robert Burns. I love having written. The man was on to something. The process of writing is as fickle as high school romance. When it's good, it's heaven. When it's bumpy, it's the lowest circle of hell.

This explains why procrastination is a trait common to most writers I know. For us, the blank page signals certain unassailable facts. We are failures, and it is time to a) do a load of wash b) aerate the lawn or c) make Coquilles Saint-Jacques from scratch.

What about that pile of unanswered letters from the Publishers' Clearinghouse? What about that spice rack that cries out to be alphabetized? These are tasks that demand immediate attention. Anything else will simply have to wait.

Procrastinators require adrenaline as roses need rain. I wrote my book reports in the car pool on the way to school and my essay contest entries by flashlight in the dormitory bathroom the night before they were due. The logic went like this: If I get an A under these conditions, I'm a flipping genius. If I get a D, well, what do you expect? I wrote it the night before.

I do my best work on deadline, I'd say breezily, and sometimes it was almost true. It was inevitable, I guess, that I would find a job at a daily newspaper, where the deadlines are deadly serious and hell hath no fury like a copy editor waiting for your copy. A journalistic life on the edge should have cured me forever of any tendency to delay, and for a while, it did. I learned to write fast. I learned to block out the police scanner and the pealing phones and the endless din of the newsroom and to bang out a 20-inch story in 20 minutes. I learned to sacrifice the illusion that given enough time, I could make it much, much better. I learned to live on Rolaids.

That was then. Now, I write a column once a month, a schedule which allows me 29 days to obsess, ruminate and make puff pastry as I wait for the urgency to build.

I've mellowed a bit with maturity. Sometimes the muse surprises me, donating a whole, shining idea weeks before the due date. Sometimes entire paragraphs appear on my screen with no adrenaline fix at all. Sometimes I actually look forward to settling myself in front of the blank page, words spinning in my head.

But those are rare moments. Most of the time, I'm back in car pool, the school driveway looming ahead as I scribble furiously. It's the 11th hour and 59 seconds, the presses are rolling without a hitch, and heaven help me, I need an A on this one.