I’m back in the saddle today, but there were a great many distractions. An almost absurd number of them. My sons have a search and find Christmas book with over 200 things to find, and we’ve never found all of them, despite exhaustive efforts, so today I actually made up a spreadsheet to sort things out during an upcoming car trip. Then there were a few Christmas gift ideas I needed to check on (this is how I work), email to get through, visits to blogs I’d been neglecting…you get the picture. Then I had to process an Amazon Advantage order for U.P. (the life of a self-publisher) and so on and so forth. Then I got an email from a guy friend giving me all the juicy details–well maybe not all of them–from the evening he proposed. Very conducive to romantic thinking…

So then, I got right on it. Brainstorming, researching, plot-boarding. But now my time is once again up.

I did, however, find these great scrapbooking papers from Basic Grey while I was searching for digital design elements to use for the redesign of my website. I’m trying to think of something creative and yet not time-consuming, or design or labor intensive to do with them. Thoughts?

My WIP is becoming but a fond memory. I’m trying to keep it in mind, thinking of it anytime my cold isn’t clouding my thoughts, or something else isn’t demanding my attention, but what with the substitute teaching I did last week, my sons’ illnesses, and my own cold, I’ve got excuses aplenty.

I did manage to finish Deb Dixon’s Goal, Motivation, Conflict, which gave me lots of things to think about, and then there was the advice from Susan Wiggs, and my work at my plot board, so there’s a lot of ideas swirling around upstairs, but none of them are getting written. Unless you count them being jotted in a little notebook.

Sure, you say…I could be writing right now. But I’m barely motivated to sit here as it is. I’ve just finished finagling the photo calendars I’m giving to a few lucky recipients as gifts this year and tweaking the final photo Christmas card so as to take advantage of today being coupon expiration day. I really want to go curl up with a book and a mug of hot chocolate. But why get too comfortable? I’m going to have to make dinner for my boys in a few minutes, and the torture of getting up after getting comfortable just isn’t worth it. Not that it’s in any way related, but I won’t go into a hot tub in cold weather either, for this very reason. I anticipate how cold and miserable I’m going to be when I get out, and I can’t take it. It just isn’t worth it.

I should really go now…

I’m taking a sick day today…because I’m sick. I’m snorting back Zicam every four hours hoping it shortens the duration of this cold…and I’m really hoping this is just a cold.

I did get to see Susan Wiggs give a talk yesterday about brainstorming your book. It was very informative, and I got several good ideas for my current WIP (which means several changes, but isn’t that always how it is? One of the suggestions she gave for getting to know your characters is to have them answer the questions at www.mylifemycard.com (the questions they have celebrities answer in the American Express Card commercials. I plan to give it a go when I’m thinking clearly again…