Unmotivation: like a leg chain.

I am having a hard time getting back into my usual writerly working routine after NaNo.

It’s simply the switching of the tracks.  For the past month I’ve spent my time in Felicity Abbot’s headspace. Now I’ve got to get back into Merrybelle Hales’, and I’m not having a good time of it.   This is a consequence of swapping projects half-way.  (NaNo lesson: do not jump off a perfectly good boat simply because it’s 1 Nov.)

Because of this, I’m having a hard time getting going again. I’ve lost a week of productivity because of it. 

The fabric I'm quilting with.
I'll show you the blocks later, when I am done.

I don’t completely regret this lost week.  I did burn out the last week of November due to NaNo and several other major events, and I needed recovery time.  So I started piecing a quilt (One Block Wonder Hexagonal Kaleidoscope from a beautiful Georgia O’Keefe lemon(mango?)-patterned fabric) to give my brain a rest.   Bold yellows, dark greens, sky blues.  It’s good for the soul.

But I am a professional author. I really need to get back to my books.  I no longer have the luxury of writing “whenever I feel like it”.  That sort of attitude kept me from being published for ten years.  (If you don’t have the stock, you can’t submit.  If you don’t submit, you can’t sell.)

I keep telling myself, “Today I’m going to write.”  Then other projects (things that need to get done) get in the way.  Yes, it’s stuff that needs to get done, but why am I giving it a higher priority than my writing?

I’ve bookmark’d great swathes of January to write. It’ll be glorious! 

But what about December?  I haven’t completely given over my schedule to the Silly Season, deliberately keeping things low-key this year… so I have room to write.

Yet why am I so unmotivated? 

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Her Grace hereby swears on the life of her main characters that she will devote the time between 5pm and 6pm today solely toward Miss Merribelle Hales and her adventures.  After that hour, she shall report back her findings and what it means for the finishing of this novel.

Her Grace also owes a fellow writer a Beta-read report.  Sorry, fellow Vicious Circler. She’s been slack.