I enjoy music writing. I really do. But I am an epic procrastinator, which means I’ll put writing my music work (reviews, articles, etc) off until the last minute. Then I tackle them all at once (or over two days) and get it done. The problem with this is the days leading up to the writing, the “I should really be doing this” is at the back of my head and distracting me. Then comes the time to actually write and I am left exhausted. Exhausted in the writing sense. Because I have MORE writing to do later…ie, my book. And I just can’t summon up the mental energy to do it.
I’m really rather grateful that I don’t have a full-time writing day job because I don’t think I could handle that. I’d be too burnt-out to write my own stuff by the time I got home. I know a lot of writers who can deal with that situation quite well and I say, hats off to them. Really. Take my hat.
The other problem is that the internet is just too freaking distracting. If I’m not approaching book reviewers or checking up on GoodReads or watching sales on Amazon, I’m tweeting about an episode of Community (fort town ftw) or I’m blathering on Facebook or I’m begging people to invite me to Google + (yeah, like I need ANOTHER distraction) and what have you. In short, I wish I wrote on a typewriter, that distractions were not just a click away.
So, I’m having an internet free weekend. At 5PM PST, I’m banned from going on a browser. Any browser. In fact, I’m disabling my wireless so I won’t be tempted. So, no emails will be checked, no more posts will be made (and they all rejoiced merrily), no inane tweets will be tweeted. At least until Monday morning.
My hope is simply this: TO GET SHIT DONE. I’m still about 30% in Book #4, Lying Season, because I had to go back and change some things. I am still changing these things. Perry was bugging me in little spots and I pinpointed it to the fact that she needed to be more assertive and emotionally tougher. There were some scenes that, though they felt natural, it just wasn’t right…and some aspects were moving way too fast. No need to lay all the cards out up front…I’ve got 70% of the book for that.
I’ve also got, oh let’s say, 12 guest blog posts to write. Yup. Like I said, need to get shit done.
See you all on Monday, have a great weekend!