If You're Not Forcing Yourself to Write, You Should Be

Look, good girl writer getting the words down

Confession: I spent a ton of time not writing this summer. Here are the reasons in no particular order.

1. I didn't feel like it.
2. I had something more fun to do (camp, hike, play at the pool with the kids, hang with friends.)
3. I was in the middle of a really good book I was reading.
4. I was tired.
5. The kids wanted one thing after another and every sentence started with, "Mom..."
6. I didn't feel like it.
7. I was watching 8 consecutive hours of HOARDING: BURIED ALIVE or THE BACHELOR PAD
8. I needed to do a lot of pre-writing work (fact checking, research, etc, etc) and I was busy (please refer to items 1-7)
9. I was too busy "building my platform"on Twitter and Facebook by posting glib responses to other Tweets and posts.
10. I didn't feel like it.

This is not the way books get written. This is the way books are discussed, pondered, stressed over, forgotten, and put on the back burner. Folks, this summer for me is the unsightly BEFORE picture that should scare you straight into a regiment of healthy writing habits. If I had continued on this terrible path my deadline date would come and go and I would be hiding behind a mountain of excuses that all boiled down to one specific truth:

I DID NOT FORCE MYSELF TO WRITE

It wouldn't have taken much. A weeks worth of consecutive days where writing occurred everyday would have been enough to set a habit OF writing in motion. Instead, I continued the habit of NOT writing.

Now I'm not saying I didn't write at all. I still managed to knock out about 12,000 words towards Day of the Dead and added another 5,000 towards Midheaven (the 2nd book in the Ascendant series) but these flabby numbers are an embarrassment when considered against the 90++ days available to me that were not occupied by day job obligations.

What's left to say?
I'm on the right track now? --Yes.
I'm writing everyday now? --Yes.
Should I have done more to make myself write when I had tons and tons of opportunity to do so?

Absolutely.