My critique partner, Eli Godbolt, said he was going to dedicate this past Monday and Tuesday to writing and writing only. I was inspired. I had to work at the stupid bookstore on Monday, but I vowed to do some serious writing on Tuesday and Wednesday. The weather was supposed to be gorgeous and my whiteboard was chock full of chapter outlines.
Let’s do this! Right?
Jordanna, please meet the overly played out phrase “Epic Fail.”
image courtesy of graphicshunt.com
See, what had happened was…aka here’s what my brain said:
“The last chapter flowed so smoothly because you wrote it all down in longhand first. We should do that this time. After we check our Twitter notifications.”
“Oh dear, we forgot to mention Lyla’s husband in that chapter. Remember? Now we have to check Facebook.”
“Well now the chapter is way too long. We should split it up into two chapters. But first, when was the last time you hit refresh on your email?”
“Hungry! You know that pumpkin cake we make? We should try that with those overripe bananas on the kitchen table.”
“We should check Pinterest! Right now!”
“Okay, we’ll start writing. But first we should take a few artsy photos of our notebook with Instagram.”
“Our nail polish is chipped. We should take it off.”
“Okay, we’re typing. You know what would be cool? If we could find something like Lyla’s driftwood coffee table on Pinterest. Let’s go look!”
“It’s been a while since we checked Facebook and Twitter. I’m just saying…”
“Our writing is awesome. So much better than that crappy book we’re reading. We should actually just hunker down and finish that and get it over with.”
“The cat knocked our thesaurus off the table. It’s out of reach. We can’t do a read-through of this chapter right now.”
“Let’s go write by the river! … What’s that guy doing? Look at that sail boat! We want a kayak! Oooh a butterfly! Aagh, a mosquito. Is that guy staring at us? Hasn’t he ever seen anyone take pictures with Instagram before? Ugh!”
“We want beer!”
“Dammit, there’s no beer in the house.”
“We should go grocery shopping. Wait, we don’t really need anything. We should go buy new clothes for our upcoming vacation though. Right now, before all the summer clothes are gone.”
“We still want beer! Beer helps us write!’
“We should bring the laptop to the local craft beer restaurant and sit outside and write!”
“We have to take pictures of the laptop next to the craft beer with Instagram though.”
“Anything new with Facebook, Twitter, Email? Oh my God, we forgot WordPress! What are our hits? WHAT ARE OUR HITS???”
“Ooh someone liked our picture on Instagram! We should upload it on Facebook and Twitter!”
And this is how my two dedicated days of writing went. Somewhere in there I was also sick. Heaven forbid I should try to write between bouts of losing my cookies. (That’s a euphemism. It wasn’t like, “Oh no, where’d my snickerdoodles go?“) I know, so sad. I’m sure we all have days like this. Good news is I did manage to churn out two pretty good chapters. Just have to polish them up tomorrow.
That’s right, tomorrow. Shut up.
PS: My critique partner also failed. But his reasons were infinitely better so I won’t embarrass myself by including them here.
PPS: You guys should follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram. Just search Jordanna East. I’m saturating the social network. Boo-yah!
journeyofjordannaeast 