By Cristina Picozzi

Some people procrastinate because they become easily distracted by their surroundings. Others procrastinate on purpose, but Kim Alexandre found herself procrastinating last year because of uncontrollable events.

In August 2009, Alexandre’s mother was admitted into the hospital and had to stay there for two months. Alexandre, who lives in New Jersey, went back home to Kansas to take care of her mother.

She not only dealt with doctors and asked questions, but she took charge of the situation and made sure she was well informed all the time. This event, however, took a toll on Alexandre and her writing.

“I was so stressed,” Alexandre says. “It was easier to not write.”

Alexandre says she’s “afraid she missed an opportunity,” because she wasn’t writing while her mother was in the hospital. Her mother is now out of the hospital and doing well.

Eventually, Alexandre wants to write a blog post about the experience she went through. However, reliving the experience through her writing is preventing her from getting it down on paper.

Last year, Alexandre found Procrastinating Writers Blog through Twitter and has been following ever since.

“It’s nice to know there are other people who also procrastinate,” Alexandre says.

Alexandre, who also entered the Procrastinating Writers “How I Overcame My Procrastination Last Year” essay contest, runs her own blog called Tale Chasing: The Urban Fantasy Podcast, which has been online for a few years now. (Urban fantasy is a subset of contemporary fantasy; She gave the example of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which is set in present time and incorporates supernatural ideas.)

Not only does Alexandre run the blog, she also has to compile her audio, then edit it, and she is working on her urban fantasy podcast novel.

Alexandre says sometimes overcoming her procrastination is just a matter of telling herself to do it. But sometimes she gets distracted by doing research before she starts her writing process.

Before Alexandre was interested in urban fantasy, she enjoyed Medieval romance, which means she also found herself easily absorbed in medieval history.

“Sometimes I like research instead of writing,” Alexandre says. “It’s easy to procrastinate when researching [because there is so much information].”

Just like most people, Alexandre has things that she does to help combat procrastination, such as finding inspiring images. She finds a lot of images on Flickr, especially images of angels because they help her write about the angels that come from statues in her stories.

She also uses a free software program called Write or Die, which is similar to the Procrastinating Writers’ Write Everyday tool, to help her write. (The main difference is Write or Die allows the user to set a word goal as well as a time goal.)

About the Author: Cristina Picozzi is a writer, an undergraduate at Utica College and one of the three Procrastinating Writers interns.