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Getting Rolling

It's a lovely week. I teach two classes (same module, twice) for the English department, and on the schedule this week rose two lovely words: "Reading Week." It's a really fancy way to say "no class."

So I've only had to focus on teaching my poetry classes, which means I have today (Thursday), and all of tomorrow afternoon to do what I'm meant to be doing every week: writing for my PhD project.

What am I doing right now? Paying bills, backing up my computer, researching kilts in my clan tartan, commenting on Facebook photos... Some call it procrastination. I call it warm-up.

My list for the day: finish doing my US taxes, run, cycle, ride my horse, write a blog entry, and get 1000 more words down on my story. I'm forcing myself to write on the story for an hour before I can run, cycle, or ride.

10 a.m., and here I am, just beginning to write a blog entry. I'm thinking it's like getting to the pitch an hour before the game, meandering around, maybe jogging a bit, stretching out the hurty places (at 30, I have a lot more now than I ever did). My fingers are warming up on the keyboard, I've turned my iTunes mix on, I'm thinking about where my character is going. In about half an hour, I might actually write. GASP.

What's been difficult is that I haven't been able to write every day, or even every week. It's much easier for me these days to go for a run than it is for me to write. I have a scary triathlon coming up in May, and I don't want to fail miserably. Plus, running and training doesn't stress me out. Lately, the writing has a lot of pressure on it. Will it suck? Will it be good enough for the PhD? Will I be able to adapt to a reasonable digital format, or will it just be a hodgepodge of images and text?

I won't know until I do it, however, so I might as well quit hemming and hawing over it. Time to go write about a girl with a black hole in her belly. I like black holes.

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