New Strategy for Managing My Addictive Personality

[dr_pretentious]

Seceding temporarily from the blogosphere didn't help. During the three weeks during which I quit lj cold turkey, work on the novel went beautifully. Now that I'm back, I'm spending a shocking amount of time keeping up with other people's blogs. No, I'm not going to tell you exactly how shocking, just that I'm no more restrained than I was before my hiatus. Rationalizing my blog-reading habit as a way to keep up with writers, editors, and agents I admire doesn't cut it. Rationalizing my blog-reading habit as a way to keep up with the friends I'm neglecting while I try to get the revisions done doesn't cut it, either.

Good = What Feeds the Book
Bad = What Starves the Book

Okay, those axioms would make a crappy ethical system, but they come in very handy for assessing my lifestyle. If I spend less than 2 hours a day on the novel, the joy bleeds out of my life. If I spend less than 4 hours a day on the novel, I'm cranky and hard to live with. Bliss is a 10-hour writing day. I miss my 10 hour writing days. My weekends could be that again, if the novel didn't have to compete with this other addiction.

So here's the new strategy:
I'm setting an egg timer on my desk. No more than 45 minutes will go to blog-related activities in a single day. Ever. Again.

Comments

[annathepiper]

Ohh, I know the feeling, believe me. I was fretting once at mamishka about needing to get some writing done, and she started to try to tell me that 'oh, you don't HAVE to write every day, don't stress about it'--and yet, I kind of do. It doesn't feel right if I don't!