I can hear it now. "That's a lot of words!" Everyone is trying to figure out how I've done it, how I have avoided carpal tunnel, and why I'm worried.
I need to have 50,000 words by midnight on November 30. That's Monday, and today is Saturday. I told myself that after I spent almost all of Black Friday shopping and cranking out almost 3,300 words of a story that I thought was going to be a flop (and probably still do) that I was going to spend all day today writing so I can get to 50,000 or more words, have all of those combinations of letters varified, and then sit back and enjoy the rest of my extended weekend.
Ha. Haha. Hahaha.
I make myself laugh.
I have rediscovered the art of procrastination.
This morning, I woke up at 6:30 a.m. EST, with every intention of eating breakfast, taking a shower, getting dressed and writing for the day. Instead, I woke up and heard my phone buzzing as it scuttled across the lid of my closed laptop, which is purple, I might add. So, instead, I checked all 40-some of my Twitter updates that were beemed to my phone while I was asleep, and then went downstairs with the intention of getting breakfast.
You see, though, I got distracted because I was in one of those phases where I had no clue what I wanted to eat for breakfast, but I was hungry and knew I had to make a decision. However, dishes were piling up in the sink and my thirteen year old sister had gotten up by this time, so I procrastinated eating breakfast by corralling her into helping me load the dishwasher.
Then, I cut myself a piece of cherry pie left over from Thanksgiving dinner, mashed up the crust, and decided to have a makeshift serving of cherry cobbler for breakfast. Really healthy, I know.
After that, I still wasn't sure what exactly I wanted to write today. Articles? Creative nonfiction? Fiction? My will?
Just kidding about the last option.
So I sat down at my computer and decided that I would start the day off with an article or two, because that could be an easy 1,200 words that wouldn't take that long. And, potentially, could earn me some money to pay off the credit card balances I accumulated yesterday while Christmas shopping and buying things I really needed, such as shampoo and underwear.
Too much information!
I typed in the title of the first article around 8:15 a.m. EST, stared at the screen and Googled some information, and then stopped. I had no will to write anymore. November has sucked all of the words out of me and I am amazed that I have found this many to continue writing this blog.
Since then, I suddenly have had the urge to clean. In the hour and twenty minutes I have spent putting off this article, I have done chores that I normally would not do, and some that I just needed to get out of the way, such as:
- opened up the shower drain because the drain stinks
- cleaned the toilet
- organized all of my toiletries
- discovered that I have four bottles each of shampoo, conditioner, and smoothing milk and that I can stop stock piling hair products
- color coded my closet
- cleared empty coat hangers out of my closet
At least I've been productive in other ways, right?
But in all actuality, I need to quit this procrastinating thing and get to work. I don't have much longer to get all of those words in, and every second I waste are a couple of fewer words that I'll have to type faster and may not get in on time. The bad thing is that I proofread as I go, so even a spelling error will trip me up and make me go back to fix it.
I never used to be like this in college. What happened? I still have the crazy work ethic, but I have discovered the beauty of procrastination.
In addition, this blog post kind of worked, raking up 738 words.
-AA
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