Tripping over my own feet

Oops, I’ve let time get away from me without any new posts.  Part of that is the rush of all things distracting: school nears the semester’s end, Thanksgiving-related gluttony, Christmas-related shopping and decorating, doctor visits…all getting in the way of the normal flow of life.  Including writing.

I haven’t written much in a couple weeks I guess.  I had the urge to write bubble out of my head and into partial new stories a couple times in that span, both of which may turn into something.  But not a lick of real progress on anything.  Part of this can be blamed on one of my worst writer habits: waiting.

I have several stories out to markets that have taken longer than the median time to reply to (per Duotrope).  Some significantly more time.  But none beyond the query line.  (Okay one is, but it’s not so far over the median time, so I’ll give it a few more days.)  I spend way too much time actively thinking about these stories and their status.  Why?  Will thinking about it change the speed of reply?  Of course not.

It’s a bad procrastination.  I’ve run into a slow spot in my novel and my brain wants to focus on those finished items instead of doing the hard work.  Subbing is easy.  Even getting rejected is easy.  Writing is hard work.

I plan to put in some hard work tonight.  I need to get the ball rolling on a new part of the novel and it’s dreadfully painful to slog through, especially knowing I’ll likely cut it and/or rewrite it.  That should make it easier, shouldn’t it?

I’ve added Kevin J. Anderson’s blog to the Pro Writers blogroll.  He’s in the process of sharing advice for being a productive (and possibly profitable) writer.  I need that kind of push right now.