By Margay Justice  » Before I begin, I'd like to say that I am foremost a reader and the Internet is one of my favourite places to catch up with my favourite authors, learn about new books, maybe enter a giveaway, waste a little time. Okay, waste a lot of time reading about other authors' writing processes - oh, wait, got to entertain my kitties, they got a new toy for Christmas. 

What's that speck on the monitor? Have to get that off… boy, this keyboard is dusty. Was someone eating a powdered doughnut over it? I wonder what's happening on Perez Hilton? Maybe I could just troll his website for a bit and chock it up to research. Although I really should be writing an article/blog post/book right now.

Ah, procrastination. As you can probably tell from the rambling above, I am a Procrastinator.

I always have been, starting so far back in my academic career, I no longer remember how it started. Need to make a 3D map of Russia for Social Studies? Why not start it two days before it's due? Book reports? The night before. Study for a test? The morning it's scheduled. The births of my daughters? How about the day after they're due? Yeah, that works for me.

The ironic thing is, it does work for me. Somehow, some way, something mystical happens when I am under a deadline. I thrive. I just stare down the barrel at the blank page, pull the trigger - and words just shoot onto the page. I don't know how it happens and I never question why. I am just grateful that it does and that the deadlines are met. This is why I have decided to turn procrastination into an art form, although I wouldn't recommend this art form to anyone else as the stress of it can be murder on the psyche.

So what is the art of procrastination, you might ask. It's the ability to take those little things you do when you should be doing something else and putting them to good use. Trolling the internet when you should be writing, for instance. A waste of time? Not necessarily. You never know what you might come across when you visit other sites and you never know what interesting little tidbit might spark a story idea. A news byte about the first sighting of a wolf in Massachusetts in over a hundred years made it into my research folder and became an integral part of an upcoming book. Playing with my cats and their new toy? Feline therapy; they get to play and I get to take a mental holiday for a few moments as the batteries in my brain recharge.

Nothing is ever a waste of time if you use it to your advantage. Long walks around the neighborhood are not only good for the body, but for the mind as well. Many of my story ideas were sketched out and reshaped on such walks. Or while I was knitting a scarf, a hat, an afghan. Knitting is another activity that could fall under the procrastination label, but serves many purposes. Not only is it productive - everyone can use a new hat or scarf - it's also therapeutic, forcing the mind to concentrate on something else and therefore relieving the stress. I love anything that is multifunctional, whether it's an activity or an appliance. Waste of time? Not in my book.

Ah, my book. I should be working on that now. But I've got this promotion to do, the dishes won't clean themselves - okay, okay, so technically they will because I have a dishwasher, but somebody's got to load it. Hey, maybe if I load the dishwasher, I can work through that tricky spot in my plot. Hmm...clean dishes equal unlocking tricky plotting. You see where I'm going with this? Another multifunctional activity.

So there you have it, in a nutshell. My secret to turning procrastination into an art form. Let everything you do serve a purpose whether you chock it up to research or a need to unwind from the stresses of creativity. As long as you get back to work at some point and make your deadline, procrastination can be a good thing. So don't be fearful of it, embrace it. Then use it to your advantage.

I'd love to hear how you procrastinate. Why not share it with everyone on this site? Maybe we can compare notes, get new ideas for ourselves, or stick it in a folder called research. It's all in the way you look at it. Speaking of looking, I wonder what Perez Hilton is up to now.

• Margay Justice is a newly-published author. For more on her writing, visit www.margayleahjustice.com.