I procrastinate.
Not only do I procrastinate, I am remarkably good at rationalizing said procrastination. I can remember my friend Joshua’s mother squinting her eyes at me and saying “Wendy, I have never known anyone with more excuses than you!” (Ouch!)
By the way, I was five.
I’ve had years to hone this particular talent of mine but, in those years, I also developed razor-sharp rules that keep me in motion. When it comes to my writing, I squint at my own excuses with much the same severity that Josh’s mother squinted at me and most of the time–poof–they vanish and I get down to work.
However, when I have guests, I cannot..simply CANNOT…write. I love having guests, but no amount of ocular severity & up-by-the-bootstraps focus on my part has produced anything remotely salvageable in the manuscript department.
I had guests for Christmas and then a different set of guests for New Year’s and writing has been in short supply. I decided to take the opportunity to use the just-before-bed sneak-away time I would have been writing to read. It worked nicely, I read three wonderful romances: How to Marry a Duke, The Strangely Beautiful Tale of Miss Percy Parker and the long-neglected Lost Duke of Wyndham. I am happy to say all three were wonderful, each in its own very distinctive way.