Have you ever been to a movie that was so slow and boring that it made you fall asleep in the theater? Or, have you ever taken one of those four and a half hour long Spanish classes, that met once a week, and by the end of which you were left with nothing else in your head except for the throbbing word, “Dormirse”, meaning to slumber away? If you have, then you may be able to read through the end of this essay as it unfolds the story of how my deliberate procrastination, my lack of expertise in the English language and my ambition to constantly produce something unique slow the pace of my writing process down and make it a rather painful one. Yes, I write in a painfully lethargic and time-consuming manner.

As a result of procrastinating, which is done willfully, I make a late start with my writing assignment. I cannot even initiate the prewriting phase right after receiving a topic, let alone preparing a first draft. I lose sleep contemplating over not being able to meet the deadline; I get sick worrying how much work I have left to be done; I even go shopping to reduce my anxiety. But I still cannot gather myself together to begin the opening paragraph. Maybe it is because of the numbness that emanates from the bitter anticipation of the excruciatingly sluggish time ahead, or maybe it is just the fear of doing something unknown. Intimidated, confused and reluctant, I finally find myself launching the prewritten outline of the assigned essay, merely one or two days prior to the due date of its first draft, in the quietest corner of a very loud, inadequately lit coffeehouse with my laptop battery sending me dying signals every two minutes.

Despite the negative effects procrastinating may have, I manage to reap something good out of it. “Every cloud”, they say, “has a silver lining.” It is therefore, the blessing of my laid back actions that enables me to seize the central ideas of my essays with little or no difficulty, the ideas that had collectively crowded my head over the sleepless nights and in between all the nerve-racking and anticipating. Ready to be jotted down, they float around me seamlessly, as if permeating the very membrane that separates my mind from my thoughts. I then open a new blank word document to give these ideas a material form and this is where all my triumphs go astray. Since I am used to expressing myself in my mother tongue, writing in English leaves me in a vulnerable position. Not only do I lack the spontaneity that comes when writing in a language that has been practiced since the age of four, but also I am short in vocabulary. In fact it feels like I have bumped into an iceberg, the iceberg acting like a writing freeze, forbidding me to freely scribble down my thoughts and ideas. I am out of words and expressions. I feel lost. It takes me about two or three more sleep deprived nights, one or two starved-to-near-death days and an infinite number of clicks on dictionary.com to eventually come up with what Anne Lamott may call a “shitty first draft” (21).

After passing the initial phase of a seemingly unconquerable ordeal, it is not only fair but also useful to take a break from all this, fair because I deserve it, useful because it distances the writing from me. This in terms paves the way for me to be able to carefully judge my own writing. So I take a break for a day or two. Meanwhile, I keep thinking about how I could devise an ultimate makeover for the essay, adding a flicker that will leave its resonance even after the reader has finished reading it. That is, I spend the time planning the final draft and the conclusion. This stage is relatively easy on my part if compared to the different degrees of challenges I had to overcome during the entire writing process. But it can be moderately time-consuming depending on how long it takes me to come up with a unique way to end my essay. Yes, I want my essays to be unique, one of a kind. I make a pretty straight forward final draft by omitting unnecessary words and sentences and also by correcting any grammatical mistake that I could point out. Happy, relieved and restless, I keep editing my essay over and over, adding something new or crossing out something old every day. Nothing could stop me. I keep going on as if I am never supposed to end it. The irony is I put an end to my weeklong, exhausting, enervating journey of writing this essay on the evening before it is due, by half-heartedly settling down for a mundane, rather uninteresting conclusion. I am not happy, but at least, the journey is over.

Glancing back at where I began, I still find my writing process looking as tiring and stressful as it does from here. Also at this point, I am forced to believe, maybe writing is not for me. I have experienced the excitement of writing, as well as the disappointment, the latter always outweighing the first. However, I do not believe that this disappointment can turn into a success unless I learn how to reflect myself about my writing. Keeping that in mind, I will restlessly chase the dream that someday, my writing will reflect anything I envision. Good luck to me!
 



Works Cited
Lamott, Anne. Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life. New York, N.Y.: Pantheon Books, 1994.