“If you want to make an easy job seem mighty hard, just keep putting off doing it.” ~ Olin Miller

I know the reasons for writing regularly, for being patient through multiple drafts, for just showing up day after day. I haven’t developed a long-term butt glue to keep my fanny fastened to the fiction writer’s chair yet, but I’m trying. I can do discipline; haven’t I held down full-time jobs for the past 26 years, despite longing to stay up late and sleep later every day? So why do I keep permitting roadblocks in my writing path?

Recently, I thought a writing partner would keep me on track. Like diet buddies, we’d check each other’s progress. Then I went through a few weeks of serious illness, he and his family bought a house, my family struggled with making our high school senior study enough to graduate, I fell behind at work, and our fledgling writers’ relationship faded away. And while he was a good writing partner and I feel embarrassed that I failed to be one, I think that maybe a writing buddy wasn’t the right solution for me; self doubt paralyzed me when I showed my early drafts to someone. I need a different way to stay on the path.

After all, I’ve been “writing a murder mystery” for two years now. But real writing time? Maybe a month.

Then I read a RockYourDay blog post last week with a key concept that resonated for me: “Don’t confuse lack of progress in overcoming a habit with the actual difficulty of doing it. If you’re not making progress, it’s likely that it’s because you aren’t deciding up front to anticipate obstacles and so you’re not planning your way around it.” [Emphasis mine.]

Wow. Just … wow. So I’ve been thinking about where my time goes:

• Sleeping, especially long, long naps. I’m taking prescription iron medicine for anemia, and that helps. And for a lingering kidney infection I’m taking a strong new antibiotic that has a powerful drowsiness side effect for me, which doesn’t help. Solution: Get well, and (the hard part) keep more regular hours to help me distinguish between real fatigue and medicine-induced sleepiness I can sometimes push on through. I HATE regular hours, though; I love staying up late or getting up early on my own whim. Still thinking hard about this one.

• Blog surfing. Err, with a blogroll of nearly 300 strong, I definitely need to trim. By AT LEAST one third, and preferably two thirds. I spent the better part of an entire day this weekend just trying (and failing) to catch up on reading a backlog of blog posts. Solution: Trim the blogroll. Again, a solution I dread; I love them all and love to find new ones. I keep thinking that faster skimming will help but it doesn’t. And I’m spending way too much time on reading — or clipping to read in the “later” that never comes. I’ve gotta trim again.

• Obsessing over useless things. When I should be pulling out my story board and tackling one of my mapped-out scenes, I’m instead sorting my sock drawer or alphabetizing my science fiction book shelves by author. Or I’m making lists that are related to my writing, without actually being my writing. Solution: Set aside time to do lower-priority tasks so they don’t crowd my writing time. Every time has a task, and every task has a time.

I’m sure there are more, but those are the ones that loom for me. I’ll tackle them first and then study my action plan again: Where is blocking my free time from flowing to my writing, and how can I avoid the blockage?

What are YOUR fiction-writing obstacles, and how are you planning to overcome every way they manifest for you?

Photo credit: Mozambique - Moments

Technorati Tags: writing, writer’s habits, discipline

I don’t know how many other wannabe fiction writers have critique partners (AKA “critters”) and how you work with them. But I’d sure like to know.

I feel like I’m letting mine down. Since we decided that 2008 was going to be THE year of the book for us, I’ve either been continuously sick (really sick) or swamped at work. Instead of churning out a steady minimum of 10 pages a week like I promised, I’m doing it in fits and starts. Skip one week, and do 25 pages the next. This isn’t doing much to instill confidence in me as a writing partner, but he’s been incredibly patient. I still feel  guilty, though!

What’s YOUR guilty confession about working with your favorite critter?

Technorati Tags: writing partners, writing critters, critique partner

So far I haven’t hit a groove in my fiction writing. You know what I mean by a groove, right? You can FEEL the path humming beneath you and the story buzzing in your head. You almost can’t type fast enough to keep up with the story. You want to squeal when you think of the next cool sentence. The words just fly out onto the page while you watch, astonished, to see what happens next.

I’ve felt it before, and it’s almost narcotic. I *love* that sensation. (I get it frequently in my vivid dream life — I’m one of those people who can go back to sleep to see what happens next in my crazy dreams, like I’m tuning back in to a taped show.) So I know what the creative groove feels like — and, boy, do I miss it.

Lately, my imagination has just limped along. Sometimes not moved at all. I had a huge burst of pages last week after being sick and lying mentally fallow for about a dozen days. (Maybe the rest did me some good.) But this week has been insanely busy with other priorities, and my writing has been non-existent.

I’ve been hoofing it at work to meet a deadline, closing my eyes to my grossly derelict housekeeping at home, groaning at the thought that I have to put together a Jr. Girl Scout program for this weekend’s meeting, worrying about not visiting my Aunt Melba in the nursing home in weeks, and struggling with computer problems.  (Currently using a loaner.)  We’ve had two extended family members die in the past three weeks. I had to go back to my doctor Monday for more antibiotics after my first batch ran out; I was getting sick again. And I’m fretting because my original illness put me on short-term disability for a week, meaning my paycheck will be delayed forever. Oh, and my mom’s birthday was March 5, and I’m just now getting around to buying her present. Bad daughter, bad daughter!

So, basically, I’ve been either busy, sad, sick, or paralyzed. It will all get better eventually, I know. But when I think of it, it’s no wonder my imagination and marginal sense of writerly discipline just said “Screw you” this week. :o/

It’s at times like these that I think of the adage that “a writer writes” (with the unspoken “no matter what” looming over me and shaking a tsk-tsk finger at my unproductiveness). But my legs aren’t limber enough anymore for me to keep kicking myself in the butt over failing to write my daily pages, so I’ll just go to bed now. And I’ll get up in the morning and write before I do anything else.

This is like those diets where you put down the donuts and plan to hit the rice cakes again in the morning, right?

Technorati Tags: Getting back in the saddle, returning to discipline, writer’s excuses