Meredith Mansfield, Author

Borrowed from a fellow writer’s Facebook page (Thanks Melanie):

As a writer, I need an enormous amount of time alone. 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. Having anybody watching that or attempting to share it with me would be grisly.
– Paul Rudnick

It’s not quite as ugly as that for me, but I have to admit there is a fair amount of procrastination involved. I’ve always blamed that on genetics, ’til now. (If procrastination were an Olympic event, my father would have had a whole case full of gold medals.)

Turns out, it’s really just part of being a writer after all.

Of course, being me, my procrastinations are different and mostly involve the internet: reading my email, checking my online writers’ groups, reading blogs agents or other writers, doing a few online puzzles, even checking Facebook. And I don’t even like Facebook.

So, what do you do to procrastinate?

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This post is likely to grow throughout the next day or two as I have time and inspiration.

1. My favorite author is Lois McMaster Bujold.  Her kind of storytelling, her damaged protagonists who have to overcome their own limitations as well as the external obstacles–that’s the kind of story I want to be able to write when I grow up.  Well, I could do a lot worse than as a role model than a multiple Hugo and Nebula award winner, right?
2. I am a dyed-in-the-wool animal lover, although I do exclude things with six or more legs.  I’ve been known to rescue lizards and birds.  You tend to get funny looks when you arrive and say “Sorry I’m late.  I had to rescue a lizard.”  It’s bad enough that when it came to the place in THE IGNORED PROPHECY where I intended to kill off one of the dogs, I couldn’t do it.  It was harder than killing a character. 
3. This is on my “About Me” page, but I’ll put it here, too.  My sport and therapy is dog agility.  It’s a sport where your dog is your team mate.  The human is intended to be the leader of the team.   (Corgis are bossy dogs by nature and sometimes that position is disputed.  I am still the only one that can read the course map, though.)  My job is to help the  dog run an obstacle course, composed primarily of things the dog has to climb over, jump over, or run through.  The obstacles all have to be performed correctly and in the right order, within a time limit.  Dogs run off leash and the handler may not touch the dog or the obstacles.  All of the instructions are communicated by voice and body language.  It’s a heck of a lot of fun for both me and the dogs.  You should see the grin my older girl gets when we play.  (Corgis are also a breed that needs a job.  Agility works very well and it helps keep them in shape, too.)
4. Greatest time wasters that keep me away from writing:  Obsessively checking my e-mail, forums, web comics, and blog statistics.  (Sad, really sad.)  Playing stupid (and old) computer games.  Not even the new, hot ones.  Reading, when I’m into a really good book (not the case right now).
5. When my evenings aren’t as messed up as they currently are, I frequently embroider while watching television.  Otherwise, television has a tendency to put me to sleep.  About half the time, I design my own embroidery patterns.  Almost everything that is hanging on the walls of this house has been embroidered by me.
6. There’s a harp in my closet.  Not the kind you see in the orchestra.  That’s a pedal harp.  Mine’s neo-Celtic, which means it’s patterned after the celtic harps, but it has monofilament strings instead of gut and has been updated with sharping levers.  (Sharping levers do essentially the same thing pedals on the big orchestra harp do.  They allow you to change the length, and therefore the pitch of individual strings.  This is to mimic, as closely as the harp is able, the white and black strings of the piano, so it’s possible to play more modern music.)  I haven’t actually played the harp in a while.  In fact, not seriously since my father died.  That’s almost eleven years ago.  It’s time.  I’ve lost the calluses on my fingers.   Here’s a resolution (and it’s not even New Year’s), I’m going to take that harp out, tune it, and play at least a couple of carols this Christmas.  How’s that?
7. I garden organically.  Although, around here, gardening could be classified more as sticking my finger in the dike than anything you’re likely to see in one of those glossy gardening magazines.  The yard’s just too big for one person to take care of, unfortunately.

There.  That’s seven.  Later on, I’m going to move this post to my About Me page.

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The photo above was taken in Princess Louisa Inlet, British Columbia.  This area was the inspiration for the world-building on my fourth novel, DREAMER’S ROSE.

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