WoooOOOOooooOOOOoooo.... Friday the 13th...

My bad luck for the day? For no apparent reason at all, the scale popped up half a pound. And just when I'd finally reached my first goal. BAH.

Karen gave me recently a book called The Pocket Muse. It's an entire book of... quotes, and questions, and suggestions, and exercises. For writing.

I thought, What a great idea. I'll keep it in my desk at work, and I can pull it out when I'm stuck for journal entry ideas, when I just can't stand talking about the sameold-sameold any more.

Yesterday was both mundane and horrifying, but the horrifying bits don't belong to me, and they didn't affect me directly, and so I decline to talk about them. But they're making it hard for me to think of anything else to talk about. So I pulled out the book, and read through the introduction, and then turned the page.

It said: What are you waiting for? If not now, when?

Waiting for? Am I waiting for something? Well, that's no help. I looked around my office in an effort to make it mean something. I sighed and flipped through the book some more. Read a few quotes. Didn't feel particularly inspired.

I looked at my little march of stickynotes on the sides of my monitor, where I put tasks that need to be done. There's a satisfaction in peeling a stickynote away and sticking it in my calendar.

The right side of the monitor is for work stuff. There's only one sticky left, this week: "Monthly metrics." Yeah, that's going to be late, because I'm waiting on information from someone who isn't in the office this week. I e-mailed the person I'm supposed to send the monthly metrics to, and told her it was going to be late.

The left side of the monitor is for personal stuff. That's got four stickies. "Willow Bough, Ch7." "Willow Bough, Ch8." "Willow Bough, Ch9." "Willow Bough, Ch10" (It used to be just one sticky that said "Willow Bough edits" but it was getting too depressing. I thought that maybe breaking it down into individual chapters might make the task seem less daunting.)

Well. Maybe Pocket Muse has a point, after all.

Why am I procrastinating so hard on Willow Bough? I finished it two months ago, and then, I could barely stand to close it and let it rest. Now, I can't seem to pick it up.

The recent Hall/Scum plot is some of it. I've been devoting a lot of time to it. And it's hard for me to switch back and forth between Dawn and Cheng. They're so very different...

But that can't be all of it, can it? I mean, even with Dawn in the front of my head, I know when a sentence or paragraph is awkward. I know whether a situation makes sense or needs clarifying. I know if the character is acting appropriately. I can still edit, with Dawn, even if Dawn doesn't like the story I'm editing.

Maybe it has something to do with fear. After all, editing means I will be one step closer to having to decide what to do with the damn thing.

Editing. Today. No matter what.

--Liz