Lazy Days and Holidays

I had the perfect opportunity to do lots of writerly things for the past 3 1/2 days.

I could have written. That would have been ideal. Lots of time with no bedtime curfews for a couple of days. I could have pounded out another couple thousand words on "The Coffee Wars" to prepare me for the upcoming NaNoWriMo, but I thought to myself: That's all still many months away, I don't have to worry about that now. 

Research. I still have a ton of it to do. Some to print and file in my story notebook for "Tiny Dragon" and some stuff to Google and Wikipedia about exoplanets and terraforming for "Into the Glow, Aborning." Again, the excuses began running rampant.

I hate to say it, but the excuses won out over every good inclination I had to actually use this time off from the stress of the workaday world to accomplish something toward my goal of getting published in 2010. I must have caught a holiday meme that got into my head and screamed: "Everyone else is lazing about and relaxing for the New Year, so should you."

Excuses, excuses.

It's been so damned cold I haven't felt like typing much. My fingers are frozen to the keyboard. Yet, it's colder now as I am typing this. Excuses are like opinions, everyone's got at least one. I have found several to keep me from the tasks at hand, namely the writer's acronyms: BIC - HOK - TAM;

• BIC = Butt In Chair
• HOK = Hands on Keyboard
• TAM = Typing Away Madly 

So, maybe it was time for me to relax and chill a little. Maybe once I get back to work, I'll settle into a comfortable rhythm of really looking forward to coming home from the stress of work to the relaxation of character fleshing and world building.

I have to. November will be here before I know it and I want nothing to keep me from the beautiful and fulfilling goal of writing and finishing a novel.

No excuses.