Image courtesy of mydeadpony  deviantart.com

   I love to write.  The feeling you get when you see your story come together, your world take shape and your characters come to life is incomparable.  So why is it that lately, I find myself procrastinating?

     This past weekend, I took my own advice and stopped making excuses.  Finally getting some real work done on the edit of my first novel, I managed to get through three chapters in one day.  That may not sound impressive, but it’s more than I have written in quite some time.

     Despite the fact that I am in the midst of a highly time consuming project at work, my goal has been to continue working on the edit every night, riding on the momentum I built up over the weekend.  Since I enjoy writing, that shouldn’t be too hard, right?  Wrong.

     Here’s the problem:

     During the day, my job is so time consuming right now that I barely have time to run to the bathroom or grab lunch.  When I get home, I need to make dinner and I make a point of sitting with my kids, going over their day, getting updates on school, etc…  Then, I head upstairs to my sanctuary and this is where things go awry.  

     Full of intent, I grab my Mac to get to work and always find some way to get so distracted that I almost forget to write.  There are emails to be read, social media sites to catch up on now that I don’t have the time during the day, research to do; you get the picture.  Then of course, there is the fact that extreme quiet unnerves me, so I turn the television on and get caught up in what I’m watching or I put music on and get so into singing along with it, that what I’m reading/writing isn’t sticking and I end up going over and over the same thing and I don’t make any real progress.

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles  FreeDigitalPhotos.net

     I know, I know, excuses.  I end up procrastinating so much that by the time I focus and get back to the writing, I’m so wiped out that I’m passing out on my keyboard.  Nevertheless, I keep trying.  One day I’ll find a cure for my procrastination, but today isn’t that day.