It’s 5:30 in the morning and I’m rolling out of bed so that I can join my husband on the couch for coffee, CNN, and the weather before he heads off to work at 6:30. When I was working it was all I could do to get out of bed with enough time to perform my morning rituals and arrive at work by 8.That included eating breakfast in the car during my eight minute commute to my job!

You’d suppose that as soon as he heads out the door I would be firing up my laptop and start pounding away on my novel, the one that I have committed to finishing before I, well you know….

This is the novel I started back in 1986, a mere 27 years ago, definitely a lifetime ago. The one that my mother has asked repeatedly if she will be able to read it before she dies and now that is no longer the question we ask. So now, almost seven months after my surgery and a month following my retirement I am doing just that.

It’s so true what “they” say, those seasoned writers like Stephen King, you need to write every day as once you get out of the habit of writing it is nearly impossible to force yourself back into it. My daughter, the yoga instructor with a successful blog, allows herself fifteen minutes to tackle any project. If that is all that she can manage, she has at least achieved her goal. If she gets so wrapped up in it that she works on it until she absolutely has to stop, she has the satisfaction of knowing that she has far exceeded her expectations. It makes sense when you apply it to writing because once you’re fifteen minutes into your project ,you’ll probably not be able to stop. But still. Isn’t the hard part sitting down and starting, committing to those first fifteen minutes?

In addition to firing up my laptop, the hardest part of my morning is opening the refrigerator and taking out the milk container without looking at or smelling the food then extracting from the kitchen cupboard the pills that now sustain me. It’s hard because I feel fine before I’ve taken my pills after I’ve eaten my breakfast. Because I’ve decided that they are magic, the actual act of swallowing them doesn’t seem to cause any problems.

Tagged: mitotane, novel, procrastination, writer, writing