Writers: The Pleasure Seekers

[Terry]

The New York Times ran an article just before the new year on Pleasure Procrastinators. Yes. You heard right. I can't believe it either. There are actually people who put off pleasure? OK, work, yes, chores, sure, but pleasure? I'll put off anything but that.

Work is always there, misery drops out of the sky, you never even see it coming. Pleasure, you have to seek it out. Sort of like that joke, “Lead us not into temptation, just point us in the right direction and we'll find it ourselves.”

An old adage says, on our death beds, it not the things we've done we'll regret, it's the things we didn't do. I suspect, a lot of the things we didn't do, might have involved pleasure.

Novelists have a reputation for being pleasure seekers, certainly not pleasure procrastinators. Some of the best and brightest authors have been hedonists.

The movie, The Pleasure Seekers, the antithesis of The Pleasure Procrastinators, was released in 1964, the year my work-in-progress takes place. I've done vast amounts of research on that year. Candy by Terry Southern, a scandalous satire, originally banned in England, became the #2 bestseller. At #8, Ian Fleming's James Bond spy thriller, You Only Live Twice, Bond girls flitting across the pages, thrills, excitement, pleasure. The Bond movie, "Goldfinger," of Pussy Galore fame, came out that year as well as The Carpetbaggers, loosely based on the hedonistic lifestyle of multi-millionaire, Howard Hughes. Also released, Kissin' Cousins, an Elvis Presley romp, and A Shot In the Dark, a madcap Inspector Clouseau, frolic. It was a good year for pleasure.

This all got me thinking. Writers, who say how much we love to write, often procrastinate. In fact, we're famous for it. But why? Who are we kidding? We love to write? If we did, we wouldn't procrastinate so much. I seriously doubt we're all Pleasure Procrastinators.

Here's my theory: once we decide to write professionally, the pleasure now becomes a job with a capital “J.” Work has a bad rep for being hard and unpleasant, a chore. It's ingrained in us. It kills the passion, it kills the pleasure. So, we do what we always do when confronted with an unpleasant task - we procrastinate. Now if we were really doing it just for fun, you probably couldn't drag us away from our computer keyboards, anymore than you could drag us out of bed with Jon Hamm or Antonio Banderas or. . . never mind.

So, since there's rarely much money in writing, why not forget about doing it for work and just write for the thrill of it. Sit down at that keyboard, seeking pleasure for all it's worth. Tap, tap, tapping away. That's it, you got it! Think of it as sex. Well, maybe not quite that good.

And if you're one of those pleasure procrastinators: Stop! Even the Biggest Pleasure Procrastinators Of All Time: The Puritans, drank beer, for Christ sake. Get tapping. And you will enjoy it.

[emilycross]

Interesting theory - as a procrastinator extradonaire - the 'j'concept is very true!

Good Post, best of luck in the contest :)

[Terry]

Thanks Emily. I see we're on the same wavelength.

Best of luck to you too:)