Maybe This Time

I have an issue with motivation.

It's something I have been aware of my entire life. My parents used to tell me I was lazy. And they were right. I have an extreme aversion to having to put out effort to do anything I don't want to do. I just don't want to do it. In fact, I often have an aversion to doing things I actually do want to do.

Right now, the thing I want to do more than anything else is to write a book. Several books actually. And I have done this already. Sort of. I joined this National Novel Writing Month competition last year and competed again this year. The goal of the competition is to complete a novel (50,000 words) within the month of November.

I accomplished this both years. It was so much fun to toil over the creation of my worlds and come up with the rules of how things operate in my reality. To come up with the little twists and turns the plot was to make. Thinking up the little idiosyncrasies of my characters and how they interact with each other. That was the creative part. I loved it.

So I have two novels sitting on my computer that no one has ever seen. And they have not been seen yet for a reason. They just aren't ready for that because now I need to go through and re-write them. Edit them. Re-edit them. Scrutinize the plot trajectory and the character arc. Check for plotholes and logical inconsistencies.

All of this stuff sucks.

What editing your book feels like pic.twitter.com/MWfnE3ljPj

— Jenna Guillaume (@JennaGuillaume) August 2, 2018

However, it is part of what must be done if these writings are ever going to see the light of day.

 So, once again, I am working to develop the habit needed to get back to work and get this done. I am going to blog daily for the next few weeks (maybe even months) to kickstart the writing habit again. And to give me no excuse about not having something to write about, I will be using this graphic as a suggested daily topic.

On any given day, if I do not feel that I have a topic to write about, I will use the topic for that day from this list.

Now, I intend to write every day, but I may excuse myself from Sundays. Sunday is the one day that I work all day. Basically, 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. I get a couple of short breaks in there, but may not use them for writing.

Let's do this.