Sometimes it feels like the universe is telling you something — demanding with the backhand of authority that you pay attention. I’ve fallen into a rigorous pattern of overtime and falling asleep in front of the TV at night, so needless to say my blogging habits have slipped a bit. I mean this both in terms of writing my own stuff as well as reading the blogs I follow, as my email folder for those has swelled considerably in the last week or so.
Almost every post waiting for my attention in there followed a theme about not procrastinating anymore. On a different but related topic, Problogger had a post on balancing writing with promoting your blog. When I have had time the last couple weekends to devote to what I call “personal work”, it’s largely been promotion and not creation.
When I began catching up on my reading today, the posts were a deserved slap of the hand for me.
Even Good Excuses Are Excuses
Having a crazy week where you can’t write much does happen, but as Darren points out, it’s best to have some spare drafts laying around to use as emergency posts for when this happens. Also, you have to be careful not to allow being crazy busy to become too convenient an excuse (because it will). Then next thing you know it’s been three weeks since you’ve buckled down, and any interest you may have generated nearly a month ago about what you were working on has likely cooled off.
Another writer I follow, Becky Dickson, has pointed out that the mistake is making a list of life obligations and seeing when we can fit writing in around those. I took that point very much to heart, realizing that if writing outside of my 9 to 5 is important to me it needs to be treated as one of those life obligations. Other things need to occasionally be put off in favor of writing, and not the other way around, because in the end that’s the only way a writer stays prolific.
Time to get cracking.
