On writing excuses

Sometimes I think excuses aren't such a bad thing. They allow you to postpone and procrastinate, which in turn allows you to chew over and digest whatever it is you need to, until you get so sick of hearing yourself go round and round in circles about 'The Thing' that eventually you just get up and fucking do it in order to shut yourself up.

Sometimes The Thing is just a pile of crap at the bottom of the stairs that necessitates one simply bending over and picking it up, before walking up the steps we're going up anyway.

I never will work out why that one is so hard.

Sometimes I've left items there for over two weeks. You don't want to know the amount of arguments I have had with myself about that god-damn pile of crap at the bottom of the stairs.

Sometimes The Thing is admin. Admin is possibly the least favourite activity in the universe of Kate. And as someone who waited more than 14 days to move some socks upstairs that's saying something.

I'm not exaggerating when I say that I once carried around a change of address form in my handbag for two years before eventually losing it. It's now another two years down the line and I still haven't filled out that stupid form. It's fairly safe to say that the new people living in my old home are probably more up to date with my mortgage interest rate than I am.

But even more baffling is when you make excuses for not doing something you love. This doesn't happen very often. Unless that thing is writing.  And then you are brought into a whole new world of excuses. In fact, when the thought of sitting down to write something heftier than a blog post creeps into my mind my house magically begins to actually get cleaned. That's how extreme it is. The looping, loopy arguments and excuses that run through my brain are painful. ('Well OF COURSE I need to clean behind the fridge today...').

Two years ago I reached that 'Oh FFS! Would you SHUT UP with the excuses' moment and sat down to write the first draft of the novel I had bouncing around in my brain for over a year. One month later I hit close on the document and felt a rush of pride. The next step would be easy.

Except it wasn't. The book got printed out and put on my bedside table. Then it got moved to my desk. Then it went into the draw in my desk. Then into the filing cabinet for 'safe keeping'.

I'm sure its next home would have been the bin, except that now, exactly two years later, November once again beckons and suddenly the time is right to write.

So I might be disappearing from here for the next few weeks while I get on with the job in hand. (And no, that doesn't mean cleaning behind the fridge).

Nothing like a public announcement to make sure the excuses don't fight back eh?