Monday, February 18, 2008 Baumgart: What to do when By Elisabeth Baumgart inkblots
THIS is the what-to-do guide when you have no idea what to write about in your next column and you are well past your deadline and your editor is waiting patiently for your submission.
Step One: Panic.
Stare at your immaculately white laptop screen with a panic-stricken expression. Begin to worry and start pacing around your room until you wear out your carpet. Allow your heart to beat erratically until you are sure that you are about to have a panic attack.
At the back of your mind, you faintly realize that you should have just submitted your column long before the deadline. And that you should finally learn to submit your column on time.
Step Two: Call a friend.
Call a friend in the middle of your panic attack. Allow your panic attack to escalate when nobody picks up by the third ring. By the fifth ring, collapse into a pitiful heap and begin to breathe shallowly. When the phone line disconnects, wail loudly.
It really doesn’t help that you keep on calling the same friend whenever you need to moan about your writer’s block. This friend obviously has learned her lesson by now and will not answer your calls.
Step Three: Drink coffee.
Caffeine usually does the trick. Go to the nearby coffee shop and spend your entire life's savings on expensive coffee. Drink three cups and try to soak up what is left of the peaceful ambiance of the café as Koreans and other foreign bodies loudly converse in the corner.
Randomly write down things on table napkins, with so much hope that your notes will be of help once you finally start writing.
Step Four: Sleep.
Despite your caffeine high and your panic-stricken state, you can still fall asleep. You decide that sleep might just help you. The sheep in your dreams might be of good use and they might bring you a story idea.
While you sleep, you dream of your deadline.
Step Five: Panic, again.
After a rather fitful nap, with dreams of your deadline (or what is left of it), you begin to panic yet again. You decide to tie yourself to your laptop until you finish your column.
At the back of your mind, you promise to yourself that you will not allow this to happen again. And in your state of panic, you promise your editor that she is free to hunt you down with a hunting knife in case you fail to submit on time your column for the next issues.
Step Six: Write, write, write.
And thus, in your panic stricken state, you finally write. And with the possibilities of future decapitation and probable death, you are bent on submitting columns on time and never waiting for the last minute.
And because of that, a column like this came to be.
