Dear Mike: Do you ever procrastinate?

Are you kidding me? I’m the King of Procrastination. Writing is so difficult for me—I’m what they call a bleeder, which means I write painfully slow and at great pain to my psyche—I’ll do almost anything to avoid it. I’ll watch TV, make phone calls, eat, curl into a fetal position in my bed, anything other than sitting down and staring with dread at my computer. It’s mostly, I feel, about the insecurity, the self-doubt, and the utter pain looking at a blank screen trying to create something out of nothing. It can be terrifying at times. But in recent years, I’ve turned this negative into a positive by understanding that my procrastination is merely a part of the creative process and that knowing, in the end, that the insecurity, pain, and self-doubt actually give me something of an edge. I’m so scared to death to be bad that I’m convinced it makes me write better. Which makes procrastination my friend, not my enemy.