I guess you could say that I have had two months of ‘bad days of writing.’ It’s not necessarily a fair statement, as I really only had two days of writing total, and both days produced two pages of work each. Problem: two pages are for the start of the book, and two pages are for the last section of the book. But at least I got something done. The rest of the days fell to errands, chores, television, and trying to spend all the time with family that I could. (They love it when I blame my problems on them.)
Today I cannot blame my problems on family, however. I wrote out a schedule on a blue slip of paper for how I was going to work out, run some errands, spend two hours writing, and finish two hours of reading before dinner time. I checked off the morning’s activities and opened Instagram for a quick break before I polished my glasses and got to writing. The last update I saw on Instagram was a friend promoting a new blog post. I decided my blog had kept me accountable for one section of my book, so I might as well post “real quick” before I opened Microsoft Word.
I had been thinking a lot about a section in Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird where she references people who write so they don’t go crazy. I figured it could explain why I felt constantly at odds with the people in my life I find most important, and why my self-esteem kept swallowing gallons of dust. I grabbed Bird by Bird from my bookshelf and hopped on the couch. I got my sleepy-fluffball-of-a-dog situated, I started the new post, and I opened the book.
And then I got lost.
I spent a solid 45 minutes looking for that one quote. I reread half of the book just looking! Finally I realized how counterintuitive it was to spend all the time I had allotted for working on my book searching for material for a blog post.
I gave up and wrote this instead.
So, rant over and time successfully wasted, I’m going to try writing fiction now. Let’s hope writing this book goes a little better than trying to write a blog post.