Here’s my remedy for the plague of procrastination.

Procrastination makes you sick. The cupboard maybe cleaner than ever before, the bathroom tiles scrubbed, the garden weeded, but that novel manuscript, poem, essay or short story is still there,  ugly as ever, waiting for you to stop farting around and get back to it.

All those other little jobs that suddenly seem so much more important, distract for a little while but all the time, at the back of your mind, lurks the spectre of the writing you should be doing. The longer you take getting back to it, the harder it is and the sicker the feeling in your stomach.

Here’s my proposed cure. It worked for me!

Edwina’s Treacle and Tahini Procrastination Cookies

INGREDIENTS

120 gms butter

1/2 cup dark brown sugar

2 tablespoons treacle

1 cup self-raising flour

1 cup almond meal

1/2 cup tahini

1 egg

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon ground cloves

METHOD

Preheat oven to 180 degrees (350 F). Line a tray with baking paper

In a medium bowl, cream the butter and sugar. Mix in egg, then add treacle and tahini till well blended. Add flour,  almond meal, cinnamon and cloves and mix.

Make small balls of dough and place on tray. Bake until golden brown. Cool on a rack.

MOST IMPORTANT STEPS

Make cup of tea or coffee

Turn on the computer

Sit down and open feared file

WRITE AT LEAST 200 WORDS (anything will do)

Now you can eat a cookie!

No more procrastinating. Bake the biscuits, face the fear, and use all that sugary energy to write away the urkiness of avoiding what needs to be done.

Okay, enough procrastinating for me. The manuscript calls.

PS. Just submitted the first forty pages to the Varuna/Penguin scholarship award. Fingers crossed.