Q. I am not a professional writer but on the strength of a short piece I contributed to a Festschrift have been asked to extend this to a 5,000-word memoir. I had no idea how difficult I would find it to do this work outside of the office context in which I normally operate. I can’t seem to crack this challenge. It’s not that I find I can’t write. My problem is that I can’t start. Every day I find a reason to procrastinate. What do you suggest?
—Name and address withheld
A. Ask one of your most ruthless and greedy friends to help you out. Send him a cheque for a substantial sum and make the agreement that you will email him 500 words a day every day for ten days by 5 p.m. at the latest and if ever you fail to do so he can cash the cheque. If it would make failure even more painful for you then you could take a tip from the Canadian broadcaster Tommy Schnurmacher, who conquered his own procrastination problem by devising a variation of this scheme.
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