I’m writing this morning – not my Nano novel, yet, but still putting words on the page, and that’s what’s important. It’s amazing to me when I have a task, a goal to go, how many distractions can arise. I know and I dearly want to put my butt in the chair and write my story, and yet I see something that needs to be picked up, or I should wash the dishes, or make a quick run to the store, or check my email, or play just one game of solitaire. Anything to keep me away from doing what I must do, what I truly want to do.

I suppose it is a case of procrastination, but naming it doesn’t make it stop. I’m just not sure why I do that to myself. It could be my inner critic, that voice inside myself that tells me I’m not a writer, and I should stop wasting my time. Nobody reads the words anyway, so what good are they? And then I wonder where that voice came from.

I mean it’s clearly a part of me, but I suspect it’s merely a mimic of other voices it has heard in years past. The teacher who redlined a paper and gave it a low mark without helping with constructive criticism. The classmate who made fun of poor penmanship. The parent who was too busy with important things to read your story or to help with spelling. Look it up! And a thousand other voices throughout the years that suggested you go out and play and have fun and stop making things up.

And why do I still let those voices control my actions at this point in my life? I should grow up! Act my age! Be a man! Oh, Lordy, Lordy, there they are again. Are we then, in the final analysis, merely the sum of who people have told us we are? A question to ponder! Time to meditate, I think, and then to my novel.