Downward Spiral

At the beginning of the year, I resolved to cut the crap and make 2016 the year of hard work, constant writing, editing, and submission of stories out to publication.

That worked for January.  January was a strong month with new material written daily.  February became sluggish with a few missed days and a lot of failed projects.  March was a disaster!  Almost nothing was written.  It was a rough month in which I lost almost any interest in writing due to personal problems.

So basically, this is me coming out and admitting what a lot of die-hard writers loathe to admit: life sucks enough to get in the way and here's my declaration to stomp my feet into the ground and say that I'm done screwing around.  Come hell or high water, I'm going to pump out a thousand words a day.  Yeah!

*Wakes up with hangover.*  Oh, man.  My head.  What happened?  Did I turn into a werewolf?  *Sees Moon is not full.*  Did I go on a rant?  *Sees the above written.*  Yup.  Ranty goodness.

So when I say that March was a disaster, I mean it was a real shit-storm.  Aside from AWP, there was nothing about that month that I enjoyed.  There were some very heavy personal issues I was dealing with that kept me from writing for about fifteen days.  And those fifteen days were in the middle of the month, so it felt like the beginning and end of March were just as unproductive.

It's been a long time since I've had someone hold me accountable for my progress.  The first time was when in grad school with weekly check-ins.  The second time was as a producer's assistant with one of my co-workers.  At my writing groups, I've recently taken to just asking others how the week has been work-wise, and the solution could be as simple as me getting back to marking an X on the giant calendar above my desk for each day of writing.  Whatever the method, I'll get back on the horse.  It's probably just out grazing somewhere.

I'm also curious to know what you guys and gals do to regain focus on your writing.