Says Sharyn McCrumb: “Each time someone blames his unwritten masterpiece on a lack of time, I smile sympathetically and nod. I am thinking: ‘Crap.’
“Procrastinators get no sympathy from me. In 1986 when a publishing company accepted my four-page book proposal, the catch was this: In order to meet their spring deadline, the editor would need the completed novel in six weeks. I did not have six weeks to devote to writing a novel. I was working full time at the university. I was teaching a night class in fiction. I was taking two graduate English courses that semester, both requiring research papers. I had an eight-year-old daughter, I was six weeks pregnant, and I felt awful.
“I wrote the book in six weeks.
“It won the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Paperback Novel in 1987. It’s still in print.”
—Mystery writer Sharyn McCrumb
There’s lots of reasons we don’t accomplish what we wish to accomplish. I hope that we, me, us recognize when those reasons are, well, crap…