Kristin Butcher... has novel ideas

At the risk of generalizing -- because I know there has to be someone out there to whom this doesn't apply -- writers are masters of avoidance. What are they avoiding? Why, writing, of course -- which makes absolutely no sense, since I have yet to meet a writer who doesn't love writing.

It is a perplexing conundrum -- no two ways about it -- but nevertheless it's true. A writer will grasp at any excuse to avoid sitting down in front of that computer to write. Get a cup of coffee. Do a crossword puzzle. Clean the bathroom. Water the plants. Collect the mail. Mow the lawn. Read the cereal box. Play computer games. Check facebook, My Space, and Twitter for the thirty seventh time in two hours. Take a shower. Hunt down a piece of lint under the couch.

Take me for instance. I have to revamp and send away a book proposal. And it has to be done TODAY. The task has been weighing on my mind so much that it has plagued my sleep for the last three nights. (I actually do some of my best writing in my sleep.) Anyway it woke me up at 4 this morning, begging to be written. So I dragged myself out of bed and turned on the computer, ready to go. Almost. First I had to use the washroom and toddle out to the kitchen to see if the contents of the fridge had changed in four hours while I was sleeping. Then I had to download my morning spam and see what was happening on facebook. Apparently Anita Daher in Winnipeg wasn't sleeping either. Of course, I had to do the daily online jigsaw puzzle and see if my Mahjong skills were up to snuff in the middle of the night. But I told myself I would get writing as soon as I was victorious.

Damn! I won the very first game.

But if nothing else, I'm an honourable woman, so I shut off the game and got to work and reworked the whole first section of the writing sample. I'm not unhappy with it. It'll be fine. Now I just have the second bit to attack. But I need to think on it a bit first, and update my blog, and now I'm feeling a bit sleepy, and ...