Today’s ‘to do’ list.
Write monthly newsletter.
Water plants.
Unload Dishwasher
Load Dishwasher
Laundry
Find and type up soup recipe for Recipe contest
Update reviews for past 3-4 months
Tell Charlie to send in his stew recipe for Recipe contest
Find RT Magazine Reviews and update those too
Brainstorm titles for print duet book with other EC author
Write your book, idiot
My ‘to do’ list is horrendous, and as I go through it today I realize that someone on this ridiculously long list is ‘write your book, idiot’. As I make my way through highly important things like ‘water plants’, ‘do laundry’, ‘find soup recipe’ and ‘write monthly newsletter’, I realize that ‘write your book idiot’ is being steadfastly ignored and pushed further and further down the list.
Since when did ‘write your book, idiot’ become the list thing on my ‘to do’ list?
Shouldn’t it go at the top of the list, and everything else go at the bottom?
But if everything else goes at the bottom, would they ever get done? Would the plants wither and die? Would the laundry pile become so huge we’d have to walk around naked because we’d run out of clothes? Would my readers wonder what’s going on in my writing life if my newsletter didn’t go out each month? (Okay, so I’m overdramatizing the newsletter thing, but I am a writer, ya know *g*).
I think the key here is realizing that I’ve let EVERYTHING take over and become more important than the writing, because for some reason I have to feel that the list is clear before I can comfortably sit down and start my writing day. The problem is it’s not 1 p.m. and by the time I clear the list I’ll be too tired to write.
Whatever this funky system is that I’ve developed is CLEARLY not working and something has to change. Maybe I need to ignore the list, or stop making lists, or just not care if stuff gets done and just write. Then after I write for awhile, see to the other things on the list.
I miss the good old days when writing came first.