So, I TRY to get to bed around 10:30pm. I usually don’t turn out the lights until about midnight or so. Well, last night/this morning, I ended stayed up until after 1am. Guess what I was doing. GUESS!
Okay, I’ll tell you. I opened my WIP just to do a quick read-through, and the next thing I knew–I had written several hundred words. I love when I get into those zones. When out of the blue, I’m typing like whoa, and the words are flowing out of me. It doesn’t happen often enough to make me happy, and when it does, it’s usually when I:
a. should be in bed
b. need to get ready to go somewhere
c. should be doing something else
Yeah, it kind of sucks. But the weekend is coming, I’ve beat my March goal, and who knows what April has in store for me? 
I came across this list on the
Self-Sabatoge.
(mine are bolded)
• Not keeping appointments with yourself to write.
• Allowing others’ needs/wants/schedules to interfere with your writing time.
• Comparing our first-draft writing to someone else’s finished, published piece.
• Not completing pieces. Stopping when the going gets tough or things get uncomfortable or when you feel stuck.
• Believing there is such a thing as perfect. Perfectionism is the number one enemy of all creative efforts!
• Setting standards too high, making goals too lofty: to write for three hours every day when a half hour is more realistic; setting out to write a novel without knowing any of the basics of the craft; simply starting at chapter one, page one.
• Holding unrealistic expectations: to write a novel in three months; complete a short story in a single setting; write a finished essay in the first draft.
• Believing because a piece is rejected, it isn’t good. Or worse, that you aren’t any good. Taking no for an answer. Letting one person’s subjective opinion be the ultimate judgment of a piece.
• Sending out material that isn’t ready. Not doing research and sending the right piece to the wrong publisher.
• Believing publication means success.
• Writing and working in a vacuum. You need other writers, other opinions.
Reeves, Judy. A Writer’s Book of Days. Novato, California: New World Library, 1999.
Last night at life group, I told my friends that I want, more than almost anything, to become an author. They told me that I AM an author, just not a professional one. Tee-hee.
So, today is one of the first really nice days of the season. I’m excited to get outside, even if just for a few minutes. Maybe, if I’m lucky, I can sit on my porch and write on my laptop while Aidan plays with his friends. Otherwise, Chris is sick, so I’m not counting on getting too much done.
‘Til later!
(Originally published at Anywhere Is…)