I have the month of September carefully planned. Now if only I were as good at executing as I am at planning!  This is the week my husband has jury duty. So in order for him to beat the interstate traffic getting to downtown Memphis, we get up at 5:30 A.M. (Gah! It's still dark then!) By 7:00 AM he is on his way, and I have a whole day to get "things" done. I just never realized how many "things" need doing. In the past 4 hours, I've redone my hair, run a dishwasher load, printed off minutes and newsletters for a meeting tonight, read e-mail and Facebook (of course!), placed 2 business phone calls for missing husband, read the morning paper, and read several chapters of a book I need as background for finishing my next novel. I've also set up automatic tweets in hopes of building interest in my upcoming edition of short stories (Left by the Side of the Road), cleaned all Angry Birds games off my iPad, and updated 44 other apps. Oh, and I had to answer (diplomatically, I hope) a request for academic advice from a former student. What did I think I was going to do this morning? I meant to write Chapter 35 of "Damed Yankee." Sigh! I know where the chapter is going. The research is done. The outline is ready. It's just a matter of applying seat of pants to seat of chair, but that's harder than it sounds. Having time all to myself is bringing out out all the latent aspects of my persona. There's a closet that I want to tear into, filling donation bags with perfectly serviceable clothes that never get worn. There's a recipe for blueberry streusel muffins begging for oven time. I could be making packing lists for three trips coming up in the next three weeks. Five kitties are vying for my attention, and one really needs a comb out. Oh, and a nap sounds nice, too.  Do I have writer's block? No! I just need a secretary -- or maybe an extra day or two to fill with the non-writer tasks I've been procrastinating about. |
