Today is not going well. I sat down to start this about – well, it’s 4.26pm now and I was ready to start by 8am. The photo of my slump-chair and my laptop also shows a bowl of melon. The melon was one of many distractions leading to a day of largely feeling a bit useless.
In my defence, there’s a lot of stressful stuff going on in my life at the moment, but the idea and motivation to actually start thinking about writing a book in the first place was to distract myself and force something positive out of a series of worrying, sad and not-part-of-the-plan events. So, while it may have taken me most of the day, I suppose I should be pleased with myself for actually getting there in the end.
As for yesterday and the writing of the introduction to 40 Patches, the commencement of the steno-writing process did not smoothly and easily follow the almost unprecedented triumph of publishing two blog posts to herald the start of my writing venture. But, as with today, I got there in the end. I stenoed seven pages of an introduction, which is probably about right (that probably equates to four or five pages of your average book format). A lot of tea was consumed between blog and book, I am told there was also much sighing and I managed to put away a mound of washing, my pile of stuff on our hallway chair … at least I did something useful while not getting on with writing.
Incidentally, that melon was my first time trying a snowball melon. It was also the first time I have ever raved about a melon. Sweet, refreshing and moreish. Melon-related procrastination is an all new theme.
I will not distract myself by going out to buy another snowball melon. I will not. I will move straight from this laptop to my steno and get going with chapter 1 …