For over a week now, I've made a point of neither opening nor deleting an e-mail from Amazon.com. It tells me that I can save (or, more accurately, not spend) 34% of the price of a book titled, Write is a Verb: Sit Down, Start Writing, No Excuses.

I leave it there partly for the absurdity of it. If I were to purchase such a book, I wouldn't immediately sit down and commence to write -- I'd read the book. Then I'd feel like I'd done something productive towards my work, not write, and wait for the next motivational text to cross my desk so that I might feel some pretense towards a vague idea of actualization.

I also leave it there so that every time I check my inbox, I see in bold that I need to affix my ass to a chair and type or scribble until I collapse from exhaustion.

So, let's add, "checking my e-mail," to the list of activities that make me feel guilty and put me on the defensive. Maybe, just maybe, I'll back myself into enough of a corner that actually getting work done is the only thing I can do without guilt.