John Grisham, watch your ass!
Continuing my string of Grand Ideas That Dissolve Into Bitter Regret (see: Weight Watchers, my own line of greeting cards, owning a bakery, my acting career) tomorrow I'm getting up at dawn to write. I figure if Stefanie can do it, I can talk about doing it.
See, here's my problem - every night it's the same thing. After work I plan on hitting the gym, then devoting the rest of the night to tapping out the Great American Novel, followed by an hour of medition and a chapter of The Wives of Henry VIII.
Instead, it usually goes a little something like this:
7:00 - After battling the surging, post-work crowds, manage to push myself home. Kiss husband, pet cats, say hi to the fish, announce that TONIGHT I'm going to write, goddammit.
7:30 - General puttering. Discussion about healthy dinner options. Decide salad will take too long. Pre-heat oven for leftover pizza.
8:00 - Get caught up in email; forget about oven. Run into (now overheated) kitchen and throw pizza into oven. Decide to have salad after all.
8:15 - Discover that salad really does take too long.
8:20 - Dinner and television. Pretend to watch Hardball with husband but instead focus on Chris Matthews' unusual pronounciation of "Cheney".
8:45 - Stand in front of freezer. Try to convince self to eat 60 calorie frozen lime bar instead of New York Super Fudge Chunk.
8:47 - Sit on couch with New York Super Fudge Chunk.
9:00 - DANGER ZONE! (Prime tv time.)
9:01 - Too late; already sucked in.
10:00 - Tear myself away to take bath.
10:20 - Check blog for tenth time. Squawk about how nobody comments. Yell at husband for not reading blog. General, unfocused pout.
10:30 - "How did it get to be 10:30 already?!" Frantically make lunch/take vitamins/brush teeth.
10:45 - Put on meditation tape. Argue with husband over who gets comfortable pillow, even though it was his Christmas gift.
10:50 - Give up on meditation. Try to go to sleep.
11:20 - Can't sleep. "How did it get to be 11:30 already?!"
11:45 - Sleep.
See? NO TIME FOR WRITING. I'll let you know how my new plan works out, but you already know how it's gonna work out.
posted by Ali @ 9:24 PM
3 Comments:
OK, let's say you get another grand idea. Or let's say you still want to pursue the current one.
Take some baby steps. Pick one morning to get up at 6am. And pick a morning after an evening with crap TV. (Crap TV you don't watch, you lunatic.)
Now that I'm working a full-time office job, I've got very little time for any writing of my own. But rather than force myself to get up every morning at 5am, or stay at the office until 11pm every night to work on my projects, I've picked one night a week.
On Thursday evenings, I find an empty conference room in my office building and write.
It makes for slow progress compared to the idea of writing every night. But I stick to it. And as long as writing every night is just an idea, the progress is comparatively fast.
So start small, lady.
I think Dan is right on. Take it small. One thing that has worked at our house to help keep motivation up for meeting goals/grand ideas etc. is a reward system. When you accomplish your goal that day or night you get a reward. (As far as what it is..that is up to you of course just make sure it is something motivating.)
Best o' luck!
I comment! I don't have anything helpful to add, but I comment!!
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