Lockdown: Tokyo Drift #8 – Getting My Act Together

I have long been a master of procrastination.* This manifests itself in my writing. Often.

I have two finished novels that need significant edits so they’re ready to send to agents/publish – and that’s not including Untitled Second Boiling Seas Book, or the still-unfinished Salvage Seven. I’m also working on a short story for an April deadline (the second version, sort of, of ‘Vigil‘), which is at least written, but needs cutting down and plenty of tweaking.

If I had nothing else to do but write, I’d have been able to get all these things done long ago. Unfortunately, I have a job to do and bills to pay, and though the fact that my job involves a lot of writing makes it enjoyable, it also burns me out a bit when it then comes to writing creatively. The last thing I want to do after a full day of staring at a document on my computer is spend a few hours more staring at a different document and doing edits.

One of my novels has been waiting for edits for about 3 years now. The other isn’t much younger.

But I have deadlines, both self-imposed and external, to meet, and so I need to get my words in a row and get on with meeting them. In priority order:

Edit the sword-and-sorcery short story, because the deadline is April 1st and it’s probably about 2000 words too long and ramblingEdit Boiling Seas 2, because I want to publish it in the summer and it’s probably about 20,000 words too long and ramblingAlso sort out the cover for Boiling Seas 2 so it looks niceAlso come up with a title for Boiling Seas 2Start thinking about the plot of Boiling Seas 3?Go back and edit the older novels, because they deserve better than just sitting on my hard drive

I just hate editing. Or at least I hate starting editing; it’s usually ok once I’ve gotten into the swing of it. But the idea of going back over words I’ve already spent plenty of time writing once instead of writing new ones is just very frustrating. And due to the aforementioned job, I don’t have that much time in a day to write – I usually take an hour or two before I start work in the morning. I want that time to be spent writing, not tinkering.

Therefore, a vicious circle of unending procrastination. Sigh.

Maybe I’ll take a few days off just to get on with things. Easter isn’t far away, and bank holidays are gifts from the gods. Or I suppose God, given all that Jesus stuff. Either way, a little retreat to get some writing done would do me some good. It worked for ‘The Only Cure‘, after all.

*It was even the namesake of my old band.