Help me awaken Panic Monster

“What is a panic monster?” you may ask. Before you look at me funny and wonder if I have finally lost it, let me clarify. I never had it to begin with. However, in this instance, I am referring to the TED talk of Tim Urban on the subject of procrastination. It’s really good, you should watch it.

This TED talk. Panic Monster is the work of Tim Urban of Wait but Why? I’ve been a right cheeky bugger using his art and I really hope he does not mind. Visit his site and send him lots of love.

Why do I need to wake Panic Monster?

The fact of the matter is I too am a master of procrastination. I cannot help myself – there are so many interesting things to be doing that are not writing.

You see I like having written. The actual process of getting to “having already written”… Not so much.

There is an exception. That exception is NaNoWriMo. NaNoWriMo imposes a huge fat deadline and suddenly I write. I would say that somewhere arround 98% of my novelling work is done in that one month. For national novel writing month, I have a huge impending deadline and a single winning task from my list of things I could do. For one month I have automatic focus.

Then December hits. We all know about December. It has parties and food and doing stuff with family and swearing that next year will be different. December is buh-humbug month.

Then, before you know it, you are into the New Year and all sorts of projects get started. February is too short. And the year trundles on.

What I need Panic Monster for

When I started this website I hoped that I would instantly have a million screaming fans demanding the next installment of my stories. As long as that happened, the panic monster would make me post stuff every week. In no time, I’d run out of stuff and have to write. Every. Single. Day.

Instead, Procrastination Monkey realised that no one was watching and I stopped writing. Not altogether, you understand. Just the sort of writing that can get me, you know, paid.

Short of having Wil Wheaton phone me up and scream at me for not getting stuff written, I need a realistic motivator. Besides, I am sure Wil Wheaton has more interesting things to do like make more lovely distracting episodes of TableTop to feed my procrastination habits between having his own life, thinking about his next book, and whatever he does when he is just chilling out or whatever.

For me, nothing wakes my panic monster quite like other people’s expectations. The very idea of disappointing another human being is like a deadline on steroids. So once I commit to something (and other people know about it) that thing generally gets done. Not always… What? I’m not perfect!

How you can summon my Panic Monster

All you have to do is show up. Which you have done because you are reading my blog. Then comment or something, so I know that I was not imagining it.

Now the hard part. Well, I say hard. Hard only in that no one does it. Let me know you want to read my stuff. If you think my writing sucks, go find a geek that will love it. Then make them read it. Feel free to bribe them with cake.

Or if you read it and hated it say that. At least I know what I am up against and that I have a short at trying harder to impress you. If you feel the need to point out my mistakes, then do it. The chances are I will either try to make improvements or disagree but either way I will, Ipromise, think about what you said. Unless you are a dick about it – don’t be that guy.

Just knowing that people are watching me and waiting for the next post will help me to write. To start with that will be exactly the same as helping me to remember to post it. After all, it has already been written.

Start here, or here, or here, or here, or over here.

Will you help me awaken Panic Monster?