WriTueWedNoMo

The grin on my face is no lie--away from the distractions of everyday life, I'm writing!

As Kathy of Well Placed Words mentioned in her latest post, a couple of weeks ago she and I headed up north for a two day writing marathon.

 Here's Kathy on the way home, snow in May!

 How did it go? Fantastic for me, I achieved my goal of a rough draft of an outline for my new w.i.p.Both Kathy and I focused and accomplished a ton in a couple of days. What have I gotten done since then? Um...not so much. Where we were, there was little to do except write, walk the dog, write, eat lunch, write...you get the idea. No Internet service, no e-mail, no snail mail, most people knew were gone, so few calls. No TV, either. No laundry, no dinner to cook, no house to clean. No teaching exercise classes, my other job. Gone were the excuses and distractions of everyday life.

Kathy's dog, who didn't do any writing (that we know of).

 And now all those lovely "reasons" for my not sitting down hour after hour have returned--with the problem of being behind in all of them. It was only two days for heaven's sake! My mom always said, "If you're gone for two days, might as well be gone for two weeks" and she was right. With prep work and catching up, it takes time, energy and focus. And oh, how I miss my writing marathon time. But I can't take two days out of every week to drive north to McCall to stay in Kathy's friend's cabin to write.

So, what to do? One thing I've determined is to "Do it first" as Margie Lawson so wisely says. I haven't yet--I returned to a couple of major distractions, but I'm setting my intention here.

One glorious distraction: Puck, my new puppy who arrives here soon, at 4 weeks.

What else? Lists always help me--unless I can't find the list! I'll admit I'm still scrambling for other ways to be focused and effective, whether it's writing my new w.i.p. or shopping my current novel or paper training Puck. Readers, ideas? Please?