Distractions and Excuses

These are some of the most common excuses I’ve encountered while trying to justify to the rest of the world (but mostly my mother), as to why I am not yet an accomplished author. I also see these excuses pop up in conversation with other artistes, so it’s not all me.

1. Wildlife. Consider the little cockroach that decided to repeatedly attack me at Barnes & Noble. Why did it insist on charging at me, over and over again, Had it just arrived from a showing of “300,” inspired by the, ah, squirting testosterone? No, the little bastard knew I was trying to write. Wildlife resents us for being creative, either because it’s jealous, or because it wants attention (consider my dog, who overturned an entire table and broke a perfectly good tealight when I decided to write at home the other day). Naturally. I was more merciful than the Xerxes of the film (yes, I know, that’s not the real Xerxes, I know, I KNOW, give me a break, I’m not a complete idiot), I put it under my coffee cup, and when I left, I set it free. But I know what it was up to – I’m no idiot.

2. The Seasons. Spring is a particularly challenging time for overly-imaginative psychopaths (writers, in other words) – because, while it kisses away the winter blues, it is also so bloody distracting and tumultuous that it hurts. I don’t want to be stuck behind a desk and bent over my laptop, when I could be Artemis – running naked through the awakening forest and turning wankers who displease me into dogfood.

3. Flesh. People can be so thoughtlessly, and distractingly, beautiful. The obvious solution is to put all men in burlap burkhas and/or make them get really bad weaves.

4.  Food. I like eating better than working. Don’t you? Some also (slanderously) claim that I like drinking better than living. We shall not listen to those people. We shall keep on keeping on.

5. Professional jealousy. If you thought that it was hard out here for a pimp…

6.  Money. You try to sit down and write a couple of pages, and then think, “doesn’t it make more fiscal sense to be in marketing? Just a tiny bit? Yeah?”

7. Herd-instinct. You’re sitting there, being a genius (as always), and suddenly someone calls up and says, “let’s go out.” Human beings are social creatures. There are biological demands at work here. What’s even worse, however, is when someone doesn’t call, doesn’t say “let’s go out,”  – so that’s when you decide that the entire world hates you because you’re a genius, and you just want to smack some gum and hang out, and screw the magnum opus.

8. The corporate torture machine. I could be published tomorrow, I’m just not a corporate slut. Right right right. I hear this one in coffee-shops a lot.

9. Youth. It doesn’t matter than Yuri Lermontov published some of his best poetry at 17 years of age – some of us want to enjoy our professional childhood! Right?

10. The trolls. These are the odious little creatures that cause writer’s block. They are a bit like Pillow Pants, only with no comedic value whatsoever. Like that of zombies, their diet consists mostly of brain-matter.