Day 945 - Procrastination after vacation

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Wow it’s been a long time since I blogged! I don’t have a very good excuse for the few days after my last blog post because I was just lazy about blogging (right after I’d blogged that I needed to blog daily for accountability). But then I went traveling for Christmas and was only doing the bare minimum of work during those days.

I have to admit I was really tempted to stop the writing streak during the holidays because it was hard to do even a little writing every day. Some days I was busy all day and only remembered a few minutes before midnight that I hadn’t yet done some writing.

After that happened twice, I decided to try to write on my phone when I was waiting in the car or driving somewhere with family. But I hadn’t prepared enough and belatedly discovered that I couldn’t write on 4thewords on my phone because the new website isn’t optimized for mobile. I had all my writing notes and the last paragraphs I wrote in the scene in 4thewords, but I couldn’t add more writing using the website word processing editor. I had the scene and my notes in Scrivener, but I hadn’t closed the Scrivener files on my computer, and whenever I sync Scrivener on my phone or tablet without closing Scrivener on my computer, it messes up the synced file. This is the reason I was mostly using 4thewords to write on my phone before they did the website update sometime in October, but I hadn’t tried writing on my phone since then and didn’t realize I couldn’t.

Was that TMI? That was probably TMI. Anyway, I hadn’t prepared to write on my phone and had to go home to do that.

After I did that, I was able to more easily keep up with my writing streak, but I had a few hairy days when I was frantically trying to write a few minutes before midnight while my family was gathered in the other room in the house without me.

Ultimately, I was glad I kept to my writing streak—I worked a little in my manuscript every day and it kept the story fresh in my mind. I also managed to finish one scene and start another while on vacation.

I had worked hard to watch my diet before going on vacation, and my IBS didn’t bother me the entire week I was gone. I tried to be careful about what I ate, but it was hard when others were cooking for me, and I started having IBS symptoms the day after I got home. I also needed to unpack and do house chores, so I took a break and only did the bare minimum of writing for the few days after I got back home.

Today was supposed to be my first full day of writing, but I spent a lot of it doing marketing tasks. It’s partly because my IBS is bothering me a bit, making it hard to concentrate, but also because one of my New Year’s resolutions is to be better about my social media, so I was setting up a new system for taking care of that so that I could fit it in in the midst of my other daily writing tasks.

All that to say that I procrastinated starting my writing work, and now it’s really late. I don’t know why it’s always like this, it’s hard for me to get back into a full writing day after I’ve had several days of doing only the bare minimum each day. I think if I hadn’t kept up my writing streak and done a little writing each day, the procrastination would probably be even worse.

I probably should have prepared myself better before starting work today. Last night I should have set up my writing space so everything was ready for me, and I should have gone to bed early so I’d have more energy today. I couldn’t have predicted my IBS would get bad, but I could have at least done what I could to set everything up for myself so I could more easily sit and start work.

Still, that’s no excuse to slack off. I did a few minutes of work on my manuscript, but I’m already too tired. I’ve been beating myself up tonight over my lack of self-discipline, so I think I’ll go to bed early and try to get a fresh start tomorrow.

Writing streak: 424 days

My takeaway for today: Try preparing my writing space the night before as much as possible so that I can more easily get started on work, especially if it’s been a while since I’ve had a full writing day.

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