The past few days I’ve had a sick kid at home. I’ve been chowing down on jalapeño peppers as I hacked my way through writing this novel in hopes of not catching what she has.
Brilliant woman that I am, I stayed up past five in the morning on Wednesday knowing that I had to get up at 8 to take her back to the doctor. I told myself “I’ll just take a nap once we get home and start work.”
Right. Cue Johnny Depp and the strangest dream ever to keep me from getting any sleep at all. The whole dream was nothing more than dear old gorgeous Johnny waking me up every single time I tried to visit La La Land.
So I gave up trying to sleep and made a cup of coffee. I NEEDED to work on my book despite the fact that I felt like crap. I felt so bad that I was ready to just call it a loss for the night and accept a big ugly goose egg on my word count log.
But what did I do? I fired up my ancient writing rig and started talking to myself.
“Okay, Annie, here’s the deal,” I told myself. “You wanna get this book written, right?”
“Right.” (Yup, I even answered myself.)
“Well, you ain’t gonna get it done if you don’t start writing, so sit your happy butt down and knock out a single word.”
So I did.
“Now write another one, you idiot.”
Word by word I ordered myself to write. When one sentence was done I would bully myself until I managed another. By the time I finished I had 1,200 words written for the day.
I met my daily goal and then some.
The thing about having a goal is that you won’t ever achieve it if you don’t do the work; some days you won’t feel like even bothering, just like I didn’t today. When those days come you have to be willing to do whatever it takes to force yourself to get busy. It won’t be fun, but by the time you are finished you will be that much closer to wherever you want to be.
What can you do today?
What can I do today? Hmm, I don’t know. Let me ask myself. 😀