Well, it happened. The thing I knew was going to happen. How did I know? Because it always does. I always fall prey to the mindset of not wanting to do anything for a single day. And that single day somehow always follows the day when I was too busy to finish all of my work. And where does that leave me?
Behind. That's where it leaves me. I'm supposed to be finishing up chapter 10 today during my editing challenge, and instead I'm stuck on chapter 6 (which requires rewrites) and I shouldn't be. Because yesterday I had the entire day to work, and instead I chose to watch TV shows.
Now, you might think, how is it that I could just decide to watch TV shows and not feel guilty over not doing the work I promised myself to do? The answer to that probably isn't what you think. I do feel guilty. Unfortunately guilt doesn't seem to keep my motivation in overdrive. It just makes me wallow. And when I wallow, I don't get any work done, I just keep putting it off more and more until suddenly I find myself piled under a mountain of work that I would have been able to get through if I hadn't been so damn lazy.
Don't get my wrong, I'm not complaining. I did this to myself, just like I always do. And I'm going to try and make sure that I get the work done today. (This means editing 5 chapters -- at least -- writing one epiphany, and this blog post.) At least I've gotten started before it's dark outside.
Unfortunately, now is when my brain has actually started to feed me information about the novel I'm currently planning. (I don't know a whole lot about it yet, but I can tell you that it's set two hundred years in the future where only the very rich own cars, and most people travel around via teleportation pads. The main character is a spy who has been forgotten and has taken to drink and sleeping around to forget .) The problem with that is that I need to have Stolen Magick edited to a second draft by the end of January. The other novel isn't going to even be written until June at the earliest, so why am I focusing on something that doesn't need to be done for a couple more months?
Okay, maybe I've slipped in to complaining a little bit. Sorry.
Anyway, I'm once more recommitting myself to my goals. I need to get this book editing. I've promised myself that I'm going to plan, write and edit four complete novels this year, and damn it, I'm going to do it! I just have to make sure that the motivationless days don't come around very often. I have things to do, and if that means that I can't always keep up on all of the shows that I love, well so be it.
This is what I want to do with my life, and I'm not going to let a little bit of laziness get in my way. So it's back to the YA for me. I've got some words to wrestle into shape.
Do you ever find yourself unable to stay motivated? How do you force yourself to keep working?
No comments:
Post a Comment