Making excuses | Carol's Musings

I haven’t gone AWOL, but I admit to ignoring my blog recently. It’s one of those priority things I mentioned a couple weeks ago — I had to decide if writing posts was a bigger priority right now than family, work commitments, the mess that passes for our slowly-unwintering garden, and my ongoing novel writing. It wasn’t, so blog posts lost out.

The annual ‘March Madness’ challenge with my #wipmadness gang began on March 1st. ‘Speedbo’, a similar effort involving the Seekerville peeps, also started then. AND my garden began showing signs of spring. Next weekend Daylight Saving Time will begin, and we’ll lose an hour that I won’t be able to find again until November.

Everyday life still has its share of obstacles this month, too, so if I don’t plop new posts into this space quite as often as usual, please don’t hold it against me. In fact, you might even consider joining me in the writing frenzy. We can keep each other accountable since excuses don’t wash under scrutiny.

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Summer finally arrived here last week. The temperature yesterday reached 31+ C. (about 90 F.) — nothing comparable to what central Canada and much of the United States are experiencing, but hot enough for me. In last Friday’s post I asked, “How will you combat the distractions and/or inertia that often accompany hot weather holiday time, excursions to the beach, bored out-of-school children, and visiting relatives?”

I offered suggestions to help carve out time for writing from summertime’s unscheduled days. But suggestions are only that… non-compulsory ideas. Unless we act on them they don’t help at all. I think most of us are guilty at times of offering excuses for why we have to be somewhere other than at our desks, especially in the summer.

“Every day, your life bombards you with perfectly legitimate excuses not to get your writing done: sick kids, leaky roofs, roots in desperate need of a touch-up.” [Claire Cook]

Excuses are our enemy! Excuses will keep us from reaching our goals! DOWN WITH EXCUSES!! Oops… seems I’m a little rabid about this topic. Sorry Wipsters, but no matter how justifiable the reasons are, if we aren’t getting the writing done, we’re letting them bully us out of the one part of publication that should be ours to control.

How did last week go for you? Did you accomplish what you planned or did excuses wreak havoc with your intentions? What are you planning for this week?

WEEK #1 DRAW WINNER
Jaye Robin Brown

I hope Jaye will be able to say that excuses didn’t interfere with her writing last week, but either way, she won our Week #1 draw for her choice of a novel from my summer reading basket. Congratulations Jaye! Please e-mail me at caroljgarvin [at] gmail [dot] com with your title of choice, and a mailing address.

Now that everyone has had a week to contend with July’s schedules, I’m thinking we might need a little extra burst of motivation to face Week #2, so listen up…

Every comment on today’s post will be entered for the Week #2 draw, which is being donated by author, writing coach, freelance editor and workshop instructor extraordinaire Jessica Page Morrell. She has offered to review a synopsis (or query) and the first five pages of a manuscript. How’s that for motivational?

As was the case last week, the remaining names not chosen will be kept for an extra draw at the end of the month, for a copy of Julia Cameron’s book, “THE SOUND OF PAPER”.

Now go toss those excuses in the nearest trash container. Don’t let them bully you out of your writing time!

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