Christmas Means Slacking Off
// December 22nd, 2010 // No Comments » // Books
I’ve just returned from a fabulous two-day ski trip with my husband and three boys. It provided the ideal opportunity to slink my entire self into vacation mode. That is, guilt-free slacking off. Isn’t that one of the main benefits of the Christmas holidays?
I’ve been beating my brow for the past month over my procrastination at writing the sequel to Danny in a Newfangled World. For a while I blamed my obsession with social media. “Build your readership through Twitter,” I kept telling myself as I tweeted about one useless detail of my life after another. (Actually, I tweeted some useful bits, too – but they can’t all be useful if one is tweeting for a half an hour straight!)
Now that my twitter obsession is waning, to the benefit of the entire world wide web, I have found a new excuse for procrastination. Christmas!! Now, before anyone starts tsk-tsking at my delinquency, I must admit that this is a valid excuse. My three wonderful boys are home from school. That means they are with me every minute of every waking hour of every day. So, parking my rear-end in front of my laptop does not resonate with hyper boys who are begging to build gingerbread houses, go skating at the rink behind our house, or, uh, playing video games. Well, the video games would provide a perfect substitute for a babysitter if only I hadn’t instituted that nasty rule – No video games from Monday to Thursday. (I cannot break down now that they’ve actually gotten used to the rule.)
Furthermore, on Christmas day I will be hosting a large family dinner at my house and have yet to finish my Christmas shopping, never mind all the wrapping of presents I have to do. All this means one very important thing: I now have a new year’s resolution that cannot afford to be broken.
I will focus on writing my sequel, starting January 1st, 2011. Every day I will write at least an hour, and up to several hours, until the first draft is complete. Ah, I feel better already. Now that I have committed to that, I plan to enjoy the rest of my gingerbread-eating Christmas holiday guilt- and stress-free with my family. And, I wish the same to you!
Happy Holidays!!
