What can I say? I'm a slacker

Not that I forgot about this blog I just haven't had time. Reading back on my posts that's my biggest issue in life, time management. Not that I don't know what it is, just that I'm terrible at it. I have my moments. I can be great at it when I want to be.

It's that lazy gene I inherited. I hate it sometimes. I can waste a whole day so easily even though I start the morning with best intentions. I wake up and think, "Today I am going to sew some purses," or "Today I am going to write some chapters."  Which is usually followed by, "But first I need to take care of the dogs, then check my emails, then see if I want to watch anything on Hulu while I eat my breakfast, and find out if any of my YouTube subscriptions updated." Yea. That can waste a heck of a lot of time, trust me.

Anyway, I fully intended to not do NaNo for November. My July attempt wasn't bad- I ended up at around 30k words on Contender in July. I have not finished that draft. I am stuck. I have to kill a character and I don't want to. I've forced myself to write up to that point and I haven't been able to push myself over the edge. However, since I have distanced myself from that book I think I'm coming closer to being able to take that leap. I want to continue it. I think I will. Soon.

But in the mean time I've been working on this other story. I started it in August and I've been doing really well with it. It is currently at 32k words. I am not working on it for NaNo specifically because for some reason the classes that require a lot of writing happen in November. I end up writing so much for my classes that it takes the words right out of me. I don't even want to think about writing for my book after spending so much effort on these class assignments. So I know November will be my slow down month on progress, which is why I wasn't going to do NaNo.

But I did write about 8k words in two days. I did do that. I've pushed myself through this yet unnamed book (lets call it Trio for simplicity's sake), through the parts that I worried about and have been struggling with. I just wrote. And I have figured out my biggest Achilles heel when it comes to writing- MY DOGS!! Yes, those loveable mutts. When I sit down to write on my laptop I usually do it on my bed. That's the only place I have to go right now as the bottom half of the house is being redone. So the dogs jump on the bed with me. In and of itself this isn't a bad thing. I like when they are close. I like my dogs.

BUT! Bailey needs attention. Like, badly. She doesn't like competing with the laptop. She doesn't bother me when I'm on my PC, she doesn't care when I read my Kindle but she'll be damned if I pay more attention to a laptop than to her. She rests her head on the side of it. She shoves her nose at my hands. She attempts to lay on top of it. She does everything she can to distract me and the worst part is I FALL FOR IT EVERY TIME. "Oh, Bailey-bear do you need some pets?" "Oh, Sweetness let me rub your neglected belly." What the heck! I do that all the time! Why is it so important I do it when I have the laptop out? She is my anti-muse!

Mia is slightly better. She's good at just lying at the end of the bed in a curled up ball and sleeping. She only bugs me at dinner time. Seriously. That was the only time.

So my fix that I figured out last month was to GO AWAY. I went to Panera which is literally five minutes down the road. I set up shop on a Sunday afternoon (after some broccoli cheddar soup because, come on, who wouldn't?) and proceeded to type for five hours, uninterrupted. I churned out close to 10k words. It was amazing. I was in the zone and couldn't believe at the end that it had been five hours. It felt like less than two.

I've done this twice since then. It really does help. Today I couldn't; I had lunch with my sister and then came home to type in bed again. But I did what I do when I take a nap. I turned on my fan, turned out the light, and made the dogs sleep in their beds while I worked. This was there feeling on that:

 Mia just takes it because she gets the big bed. Bailey, however, is not amused at the situation. But it worked. The couldn't distract me from there.

Finally I did get to finish one of my hats I am making for the upcoming craft show. I am going to attempt to sell some of my things I have made over the year at a Christmas craft show. Wish me luck. Some of what I am going to make are owl and penguin hats of varying sizes. So I got about 4k words typed today and finished a hat. Other than that I was useless today. I'm not sure if that counts as being productive.

That's ok, tomorrow will be worse since I work from 9-7. Friday will be all about school. When will I get to write again?!

Owl hat I finished today. Super cute.