Gibbering With Fear

This weekend I had a rare experience of what is generally recognised to be the writer's most dangerous enemy: procrastination. 

I'd taken a day off work on Friday to devote to slavish polishing of my manuscript. Like most writers, I have a day job with a limited holiday allowance. So taking a day out of that limited allowance, just to be tied to another desk is not a casual decision. I should have been worked really hard, right? Wrong.

I had a lie in. Then I did a bit of sewing. Then I blogged about my sewing. Then I had lunch, an afternoon doze, and read of a magazine. At 3pm the full horror of a wasted day hit me in the face like a ton of bricks. How did I handle this? With maturity, sobriety and a philosophical shrug of the shoulders? Hmmm. Maybe. Not quite. Nothing like? 

Here's a User's Guide to Writer Melt Down:

I lunged for my netbook and posted a status update on Facebook that was a thinly disguised plea for reassurance. My writer friends came good and within minutes I was reading stories of other people's utter inability to crack on and knuckle down. Phew! It's not just me then.

Rather than drag myself to my desk, I ran out to Walthamstow market. Darting from shop to market stall, my brain fizzing with panic, I spent money. I was doing something, wasn't I? Yes, avoiding.

I texted my boyfriend with my plight. 'Well, you've had a busy couple of days,' he texted back. Kind, but I would almost have preferred an admonition. After all, I was already flagellating myself.

This one worked. All the panic, wasted nervous energy and temptations to bust into tears reminded me how important my mission meant to me. I had a deadline! I couldn't just mess about like this! I returned to my desk bright and early on Saturday morning and worked. And worked, and worked... I spent most of Sunday working, too. There's nothing like a spot of panic to focus the mind.

But I didn't enjoy that experience. It reminded me all too much of being a teenager, gibbering with fear over revision. I'm usually much more controlled than that, control freak that I am. What made me slip up? Who knows. But it's an experience I don't particularly want to repeat.

How do you deal with your moments of procrastination? There must be better techniques than Facebook and shopping. Surely ... aren't there?