Getting behind is something no one wants to do, especially when it comes to goal setting. As writer, there’s no one else to keep us honest but ourselves. Don’t get me wrong, I depend on my faithful critique group, and see and hear them in my head when I’m working. I can’t live without almost daily email exchanges from my writing partner. But when it comes to the day to day, get the words down between loads of laundry kind of motivation, there’s only one place it comes from: me. Yep! Me, myself and I get up each morning, get breakfast, get the kids off to school (with the help of my wonderful husband) and get to the task at hand. There’s no one standing over me saying, “C’mon Patti, get to work. You’ve got 4 hours until lunch. How many words to want by then?” If I don’t set my own goals and stay honest about meeting them, this time next year my novel still won’t be fit for human consumption. And I don’t get this time back. None of us gets to relive one moment of the hours we have. When they’re gone, they’re gone, so making the most of each one is important.

This week I’ve gotten a bit sidetracked, but in a good way. Even in the midst of novel writing, there are manuscripts to put in the mail, queries to follow-up on and new contacts to make. All those things happened to me this week, so I don’t consider it time away from the work, but just another aspect of it. Oh, did I mention that not only is there no one to keep me honest, we writers also do our own promotion and try to sell our own work until we find an agent. So, that means sometimes the business of writing has to come first. But now all that’s taken care of for this week and I’m back on track for today. It’s time to revisit the story and pick up where I left off. I’ll have to admit, the sidetracking came at a good time yesterday since I was diving into some tough scenes in the novel and needed to look away for a bit. Drawing from memory means taking the good with the bad, and I just wasn’t quite ready yesterday to deal with some of the bad. However, after a good night’s sleep and a smooth start to the day I’m ready to take another crack at it.

So, whatever project you have today, whether writing or otherwise, don’t worry if something sidetracks you a bit. Take time to deal with whatever it is and get back on the road! Happy Writing!