Walloped by Spring Break

For the first three days of April, I met my goals. I think. Then the weekend came... then spring break. And all this time that I foolishly envisioned I could structure for my writing goals was eaten up by mostly fun and exciting things (shopping for/trying to sell a horse) that meant we spent a lot of time in the car/truck/barn. And lots of state highways.

I fell off all wagons. Writing wagon. Exercise wagon. Eating right wagon. Even the laundry wagon.

But this wasn't a failure unless I stop here. A detour, possibly. Maybe even a trip into the ditch on the side of the road. But not a failure.

Come Monday, spring break is over. Then you'll find my behind in the chair. (Or my feet on the treadmill, working at my desk there.) And I'm going to keep showing up every day until I actually have changed my habits. Which means I'll keep showing up every day from then on.

Hallelujah amen.

accountability

Since today is really accountability day for the week, I'll do my confessing now. As you're probably already sick of hearing (I think this is the third time I've said it in this blog) I started handwriting my daily work, typing it in the next day as my review. But since I kept editing down as I went, my word count has been "little" on an average basis, and my Type A'dness couldn't take it anymore. So, for the past two days my hands went back to the keyboard and I just let the words go. A lot won't be keepers, but it made me get to about 7000 words for the week at this point. I've written a little over 1000 this morning--now I'm going to go have coffee with a friend, and hopefully I'll be so jazzed when I get back that I can write at least 2000 more!

That's my goal, anyway.

But the real reason I posted today is to tell everyone about the best tool I have in my writing arsenal. That tool is really a person--my accountability partner. I live in Oklahoma, she lives in South Carolina, and we met while taking an online class. We've never met face-to-face, but we "talk" every day through email, and I could not accomplish half of what I do every day if she wasn't around for me to toss out ideas to, vent about things I'm irritated about, and share my joy when something goes right. In fact, I wouldn't be in this group without her, as she was the one who found out about JaNo and gave me the means of signing in. Thanks again, Anne!

So, if you want your writing life to improve, I recommend finding an accountability partner of your own. While this JaNo blog helps us this month, a regular partner will help you all the days after JaNo ends.

But you can't have mine! Anne is already taken!