Getting Out of the Way...

Sometimes you just need to kick yourself in the ass.

This morning I woke up determined to break the streak of bad writing days I had logged this week. Wait, let me rephrase that, the streak of NO writing days I had logged (bad sounded better than NO days.) Oh it wasn't for lack of trying, a blank screen and I tangoed together for a few hours on Sunday evening and again on Monday. On Tuesday I tried a different tactic and just "intended" to write all day but never even opened up Word (ouch!)

I could give you a million reasons and theories why. Aside from writing, I think a writer's favorite past time is talking about writing and it doesn't help that readers seem to be interested in the subject which just fuels the fire. As I have said before, talking about writing isn't writing so does it really matter why?

This is where the ass kicking comes in. Last night before I went to bed I made myself promise that I would: 1) get back to exercising in the morning (the heat wave put me off my long morning walks which seemed to coincide with a decline in my writing output) and 2) that I would write for at least three hours even if all I did was write about why I wasn't writing.

I pushed myself out of bed this morning, put on my sneakers and grabbed my laptop and went for a long bike ride which ended at the town beach. I plopped myself down at a picnic table and powered up. In this scenario wireless is my enemy, so writing outside used to be a good way to keep myself focused. That is until Cablevision decided to light up my whole town with free wireless for customers (and guess who is a customer?) Still, I soldiered on, amazed I had "excellent" connectivity that I wasn't even using.

I wrote for ninety minutes, went to the post office and banged my head on the counter reaching for a medium priority mail box, saw stars, got into a conversation with a woman who was sending chocolates to her granddaughter, came home and wrote on my patio for another ninety minutes.

Notice how I did NOT step foot into my house until I was done? When I get like this, the house is not my home, it is a minefield of distractions so part of the ass kicking meant I could NOT go home empty handed.

The whole idea that you can only write when you are inspired is crap, it's a job and just like any job you don't always feel like doing it but you do. Unfortunately, I am the sole proprietor of Teri Coyne - Writer so sometimes I have to kick my own ass.

Today it worked, tomorrow, well let's just take this one day at a time.