Short story – “Procrastination”

I just published The Uncapped Pen, a collection of fifty short stories dealing with writing in some way.  I got the idea for this story about a month ago, long after I had the fifty stories selected for the collection.  So I’m just posting it here as a bonus.

“Procrastination”

With a fresh cup of coffee, John sat down at his desk and opened his laptop.  He put the cursor over the file for his novel, but hesitated.  “I think I’ll play some solitaire first.”

He was quickly at Solitaire Universe, a site where one could play hundreds of versions of solitaire.  His current favorite version to play was Lady of Devoke, where you had to organize three decks of cards out of a random pile.  One hand usually took about fifteen minutes to play, with only a 10% chance of winning.  But something about using simple, basic rules to turn chaos into order just appealed to John’s sense of the world. 

Starting a new game, he said, “I’ll play until I win a hand, then I’ll work on my novel.”

For the first five minutes or so, the outcome of the game didn’t look good.  But then came a lucky break, and as each new card was revealed, it just came more and more likely that he’d win.  And he did.

As the cards started their animated victory dance, John said, “I guess even the universe is telling me to write.”

But like most people, John didn’t like being told what to do.  And while he’d promised to write after winning a game, he decided it wouldn’t hurt to play one more.