Blog No. 174
Last week we a flurry of activity coming of the super successful weekend Christian and had, everything was moving forward—until it wasn’t. I’m not sure how it happened. (I’m never quite sure how it happens). For some reason, I just stopped working. Progress was good, spirits were high, the intentions were there, then (poof) nothing. It seems to be a disturbing trend. Whenever I’m feeling good, or successful, I totally slack off and throw it all to the winds. It’s not a conscious thing, there are just a lot of video games I want to play and TV I need to watch. If I add on real responsibilities to that, nothing gets done and I have only a few thousand words to show for all that time.
There have been some good distractions. Following my brother’s lead, I’ve started regular exercising again. It’s an insane workout at the local boxing gym and because of my writer’s group I can only go every other week, but it’s something. Plus I’m deluding myself into thinking that during the weeks that I can’t go I’ll do some of the exercises I learned from the previous week on my own. That’s not likely, but the days I do go, boy howdy is it a challenge. I’ve never worked so hard physically in my life (except for maybe when my father and I discovered that a two man auger is bullshit). I’m already feeling a bit better and from experience I know that will help with my writing.
That doesn’t change the fact that I am totally dropping the ball though. I recently finished editing a colleague’s book. I was a once over job and he is eventually bringing it to a real editor, so don’t worry, I’m not duping anyone or anything. It was an extra task to go along with the usual writing and editing submissions and some WOW stuff. I’ve found editing is a good way to learn good writing. I often spot things that I do in my writing that I can work on. Somehow, with all that, I managed to do more writing that since I’ve finished. I used to claim that the busier I was, the more I managed to get done, but I don’t always think that’s true now.
I did have a few write-off days as I was either selling books or fulfilling some other responsibilities. Really, though, that comes back to laziness. If I were really committed I would find the time and energy to get something written, even when I was at an out of town convention and didn’t get home until nearly nine at night. Sure I was pretty worn out and after all that being social I just wanted to hide in my room and vegetate, but there is always twenty minutes to get a few hundred words done. Even minimal progress is progress.
Either way, this is just another post filled with excuses and self lambasting with no real goal or solution. I already know the solution and even with the other things currently piling up in my to-do-box, I have to find time to get this darn novella done. Otherwise, what the heck am I doing all this work for? I’ll cut it there in the hopes that I’m go do something more productive. If you find the secret, send me an email and I’ll pay you with all the money I’ll make from having that secret.
Ben Van Dongen 