This post is approximately 400 words, and likely sounds familiar to other writers.

Since the dawn of humankind, storytellers have been shaking their fists at the sky, cursing the suddenly important things that got in the way of the work. I believe they shouted something like this:

O, procrastination! Thou art a foul contra-muse who plague-eth my writing time and sendeth me on unnecessary and irrelevant paths.

That might not be a direct quote from writers of yore, but I think it’s pretty close (I’ll probably start using it myself). To be clear, I’m not talking about the demands of daily life (e.g. human interaction, food, or taking out the frickin’ garbage because you can smell it from the other room). Rather, I’m talking about those things that should be put off until the writing session has concluded. BUT OMG, THEY SUDDENLY CANNOT WAIT! THE WORLD’S FATE DEPENDS ON THAT THING BEING DONE RIGHT NOW!

Bad writer.

It happened earlier this week. As annoying as it always is, Tuesday was particularly disheartening because I’d taken a week off and it was one of my writing days. Consequently, my output for the day suffered.

But not all was lost. I’ve worked to make up the time and the experience gave me the topic for today’s blog. Check out my list of obviously world-saving endeavors:

• Got coffee
• Checked Facebook
• Watched cool acoustic version of Take On Me by a-ha
• Listened to Prince’s I Could Never Take The Place Of Your Man
• Polished and scheduled blog post
• Reviewed website stats
• Added formatting to older posts for consistency
• Got more coffee
• Researched WordPress Premium
• Chastised self
• Took notes for writing this post
• Put this post idea aside for a couple days (finally on-task!)

Morning well spent, eh? Oh, well.

Many of these things are important to the job – especially coffee – but most could be done outside my scheduled writing time. I do have some tricks that keep my train of thought from derailing, but they failed me on Tuesday. I’ve been doing writing of one form or another for twenty years, and still, I am plague-eth.

As you see at the end of the list, however, I pulled my morning out of the nosedive. But it took awhile and more effort than it should have. I consider this post a visual reminder that it will likely happen it won’t ALWAYS happen and those days are good indeed.

Good luck with your writing!

–Mike

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© Michael Wallevand, October 2017