Procrastination

I have less than thirty pages left to write in Last Night at the Halfmoon and I'm planning on sending it off tomorrow.

So I'm procrastinating. It's always hard to write those last few pages, you know where you have to go, you know what you have to say, and because of that - for me at least - it's complicated.

A lot of writers procrastinate - I'm one of them. Many of us work better under deadlines - I'm one of them. But for me it's even more than that. I'm the kind of writer who doesn't know what happens in the next sentence, let alone in the new paragraph or chapter or at the end of the book. Once I do, my interest wanes.

So I procrastinate. And I'm grateful that today - when I absolutely need to procrastinate - Turner Classic Movies is showing a whole day of Cary Grant movies. I can't think of a better way to procrastinate than watching Cary Grant.

Charade, Arsenic and Old Lace, North by Northwest.

Cary Grant. Sigh. There's no one like him. Elegant. Funny. Wears clothes like no one else. Handsome (of course!). I read an article once by Joanna Schneller in the Globe and Mail and she said something that really rang true for me. She said - and I'm paraphrasing - that Cary Grant always let his leading ladies steal the show. And I think that's true - watching for the 10th or 20th time North by Northwest. Eva Marie Saint steals all the scenes they are in together and he lets her. Audrey Hepburn steals them in Charade.

I should go back to work - really. But I've started watching Cary Grant and I can't stop. North by Northwest is a long movie but I'll stay up right until the end.

There are many actors I like, but I don't think there's anyone other than Cary Grant who I like in every movie I've seen him in. He always has a sense of humor, he always looks great, he always stands back when he needs to. Who's your favorite?

Kate