The Fine Art of Getting Your Ass in the Chair

By Alexi Zentner

I just sorted a pile of M&Ms by color, which took about five seconds (sadly, I only had about two dozen M&Ms left, as I’m trying to improve my diet, which means that I’m no longer keeping a giant bag of chocolate in the drawer of my desk. Also, as a side note, I’m eating M&Ms because you can’t buy Smarties in the USA). I color-coded my candy because I’ve already alphabetized the more than 1,000 books I’ve got in my office, and because the other alternatives for procrastination – folding laundry, cleaning my workbench in the garage – seem even less appealing than doing my work. The problem is that I have too much guilt to do something I’d enjoy, to just go read a novel or head out to see a matinee. Because I’m supposed to be working – finishing my next novel, polishing up a short story, and working on some new stuff – but don’t really want to actually do any work, I’m stuck in a sort of limbo, where I’m not actually getting anything done but I’m not really having fun either.

I’ve probably earned the right to take a day off when I feel like it: Touch is coming out in a whole bunch of countries and languages, I’m almost finished my next book, and I’ve got several short stories out with my agent. But I can’t do it. One of the most important lessons I’ve learned about being successful as a writer is that it always takes more work than I want it to. There’s a certain art to getting your ass in the chair and keeping it there for however long it takes. I can’t even begin to count the number of people I’ve met who wanted to be writers but who didn’t want to spend the necessary time at their desks.

All of the working writers I know do just that: they work. I’m not as rigid as some – I don’t have a word count or a number of pages I try to put out every day, or even a set number of hours that I try to get under my belt – but I’ve learned that when things are going well I lose track of time, I get up to grab the kids from school and realize I’ve forgotten to eat lunch (which is saying something, if I’ve forgotten about lunch). But that’s true for all of us: when things are going well it never feels like work. The problem is that to get to that point where I lose track of time, I need to get my ass in the chair and keep it there, I need to alphabetize my books, color coordinate M&Ms, do anything but walk away.

Alexi Zentner's debut novel Touch is out this month from Chatto & Windus - praised by Mary Lawson as "A remarkable novel, full of mystery and beauty, it chills you to the bone and then warms your heart."

For a chance to win a copy, comment below with your favourite procrastination techniques.