Okay, let's try this this morning!

Ironically I am trying to get back into making blog posts again during the busiest week of the school year when I have a few 12+ hour days. But let us not talk of frightful nights like Halloween Read and Treat night at our school or parent/teacher conferences. Let us talk instead about writing. I have so much to say about writing. (Oh, and guess what else I've dropped the ball on lately. Running. *sigh* But that's another tale for another day).

Nanowrimo (National Novel Writing Month) is coming up within a few short days, and what I have learned is that I have a real problem. You may think I'm being a bit tongue and cheek here, and I probably am on some level. I tend to joke about serious stuff a lot, one of those self-protective quirks, I guess. No, seriously. I realized a few weeks ago, with some devastation, that my procrastination is beyond an annoying quirk that I poke fun at myself for. It's an entire story of my life of unfinished projects, unfollowed-through promises, and unfinished dreams. Yes, my computer proves that. Stephen King proves that. How does Stephen King prove that and what does he have to do with my writing life? Well, he has this method that he talks about in his book On Writing, about how he accomplishes life as a writer, and it is a very different world from how I accomplish writing. And guess what. He's published more books in his life than I could ever dream of and more. What he does works. And it has little to do with talent. Don't get me wrong. Stephen King is talented. He's in fact overlooked a lot because snooty literary people have only seen his movies and not his books, and a lot of his books do not translate well to movies and they just end up looking like trashy horror. Again, don't get me wrong. Stephen King DOES write trashy horror on occasion, but it's GOOD trashy horror. The man knows how to spin a yarn. He knows what he's talking about. He knows what goes bump in the night and how to scare the crap out of anyone who doubts that things really do go bump in the night.

Anyway, a day in the life of Stephen King: write all morning with no distractions, do errands and other stuff in afternoon plus some editing, read books in evening and family time, go to bed. (Granted, Stephen King doesn't have a day job, but he did at some point before he was famous and he did a variation of that schedule around his work schedule.)

A day in the life of MY writing schedule on a NON-WORKING day (to make it equiv.): screw around on the internet, play with cat, try to decide between two or three writing projects to work on, arrange files on computer, write for 15 minutes, get distracted by shiny forum about hair care/Siamese cats/clean eating/running, google random things, decide I don't want to work on project I chose to work on, play with cat, go run some errands, talk to old friend on phone for 3 hours, clean house minimally, look at my files again, screw around on the internet, watch a few more episodes of Parks and Recreation, think about how much I want to succeed as a writer and feel resentful toward people like the Twilight author who can't write herself out of a paper bag and yet at least finished what she started hardcore and is now laughing her way to the bank, cry a little, look at files and can't decide what to work on again, feel resentment at other people who are organized and know how to manage their time well, go to bed

So, here we are at the eve of Nanowrimo, and part of my big dilemma is: Do I put my big girl pants on and pretend to be Stephen King, stop screwing around, and pick my oldest project that already has 124,000 words (so yes, cheating, but I have a plan to make it NOT cheating for Nanowrimo) and do this ONE PROJECT and one project alone until it's finished, I don't care how long it takes or how sick I am of it? Or do I pick something for pure pleasure and fun and do it and then promptly never look at it again like last year's Nanowrimo project? I'm leaning toward the former at this point.

Oh, if there were prayers in my life, I would pray for Stephen King's muse and focus.

And too bad The Shining was about a job gone wrong and not about a vacation gone wrong because that would be an awesome movie to review for my theme.

Redrum! Redrum! REDRUM!