In under the wire

I took last night off from blogging, mainly to sleep. I was checking my email at 9:45 and falling asleep at the screen, so I decided it would be best if I just went to bed. (If you got a blank email from me, it's because I was nodding off and clicking the mouse as I went out - very funny.) I had already been at work all day, then home to get my daughter, off to dinner with the husband and brother-in-law and it had been a long day.

Today, I was up again early to get daughter gone to her dad's house then running an errand into town – Scott needed new sneakers and I needed two pairs of new work shoes – and picking up the son from a week away at camp, then lunch, another errand, back to the house to hand son off to father, over to get brother-in-law to go see Hancock (great movie, btw, more later if I think of it), dinner, then home to veg and watch Cloverfield with the hubby (an okay movie, it was what it advertised it was). All I'm saying is, it's been a crowded day of supposedly chilling for a day because it's the weekend.

What does this have to do with writing and being a writer? Well, I’d like to think my devotion to this project, by coming upstairs tonight at eleven p.m. to get it done, shows some resolve. I hope it means I gaining some self-awareness of myself and how/when/if I really want to be a writer as an avocation. I knew I took last night off. I did it deliberately as I was putting myself to bed. I wasn’t pretending that I forgot or that I would get up later and do it. I also decided that one night off was all I was going to allow.

There was a discussion here about taking weekends off from writing. Based on what I’ve read of the authors I admire, I don’t think that’s a plan that can work. As far as I can tell, and I welcome differing opinions to get a discussion going, writers write every day. Okay, or think about writing, or talk about writing, or try to sell their writing, every day.

I think being a writer needs to fall into the category of behaviors that include addictions. Possibly this is because I have the addictive personality type and would love to be able to use the power for good instead of evil. But possibly because writing, as an advanced civilization form of storytelling, can get right down to the lower brain part of us that drives compulsion and addiction and crazy-got-to-do-it behavior. And how great to be able to tap into that part of our psyche that spurs an all-consuming drive to act.

Yes, I am sounding a little maniacal. If I do an Agatha Christie – lose my memory, check into a fancy spa – use this material to confirm that I am a complete nut job, get my Social Security disability, and leave me at home with a day nurse, a spiral notebook and a pencil. Wait, maybe that was my plan all along…

Got to go. The midnight deadline approaches.

~Noelle 07/12/08