Hmmm - What Was I Supposed to Be Doing?

Seems like I've spent the better part of the last week doing pretty much everything but writing. Or at least, not working on the novel. I've done a lot of reading. I've done a lot of thinking. I've done plenty of web crawling, sometimes under the guise of 'research' - though I don't think looking up obscure bands from the early '90's on iTunes really counts, do you? I did a flash fiction piece for the Flash500 game over at Crabby Cows. If you want to check it out, look for Flash500#2. And that was kind of a good thing, 'cause it was a lot of fun and a good learning experience (I'd never done flash fic. before), but it didn't get me any farther along on the damn book. And that's just not okay.

There's been plenty of perfectly valid reasons why I haven't been wading through the draft. Tuesday I started a smoking cessation program (again - wish I didn't like cigarettes so damn much) and the Zyban has turned my head into one giant twitching fuzzball. I currently have the attention span of a gnat and my energy level alternates between super-zippity-doo-dah and sub-sloth. The sad thing is that I haven't even stopped smoking yet (supposed to stop on Wednesday...med needs time to build up in the ol' brain). I'm really excited to see what the combo of nicotine withdrawal and Zyban's gonna be like this time around - NOT. And then my husband cracked a root in one of his teeth. He's been cranky and on pain meds since Tuesday. Most people are mellow on pain meds, but he just gets nauseous and pissy. Understandable, but not a lot of fun.

The problem isn't that I don't have good excuses. The problem is that excuses don't mean shit. They aren't going to get the words down, the plot arc completed, the characters fleshed out. I'm 2/3 of the way through the damned thing and it's time to put up or shut up. And here I am, bitching about it on my blog when I should be writing.

So the new plan is this: two hours in the a.m., two hours in the afternoon. Doesn't matter if I write, or I don't. Doesn't matter if it's good, or it's shit, or it's somewhere in between. Doesn't matter how many words I write (really good at playing mind games with myself on this one). Doesn't matter if I sit in front of the computer for the whole two hours staring at the blinking cursor. What DOES matter is that I'll be in place, with nothing else to do but suck it up and spit it out. Okay, that last part didn't quite come out right, but you know what I mean. And that's exactly what I will be doing as of...now.