Simple questions.

I'm diving headfirst into editing the first Emerson novel.  I've taken forever to go through the hard copy and mark the hell out of it, and now it's time to dig into the digital version and start actually making the changes.

I've been lazy.  Sick.  Sleeping a lot, or not sleeping enough.  Thinking a lot.  Sometimes thinking too much.  And all of it's good for my writing--the thinking especially, but even the sick and tired, because some of my best brainstorms have come when I'm a little fuzzy in the head.

But goddamn it, now it's time to get down to business.  And my business is writing.

I started up again today with the early o'clock wake-up time.  It makes me happy to tackle the most important thing in my day first.  It's what I need to do, and I started doing it today.  And I'll do it tomorrow too, and the next day, and so on and so forth.  I'm getting other shit done too--work, freelance, life in general, cooking delicious gluten-free noms, etc--but writing must be my number one thing.  And I must treat it as such.

Treating it as my top priority boils down to asking myself a few simple questions when something comes up.  And "something" could be anything--being distracted by cats on the internet or a Sephora sale, catching up on Person of Interest, taking a nap, writing something else, doing something that could take me out of "writerbrain" mode, etc.  But in the case of any kind of something, I'm training myself to ask:

1. Is this really necessary?
2. Is it useful to someone I care about helping?
3. Will this help me with my Emerson-related goals?

If the answer is not yes to one or several of those questions, then I need to think very carefully about whether or not I do the thing that I'm asking myself about.  This line of thinking is making me cognizant of the many barriers (whether meaningful or frivolous) to writing and how I can handle them well so they don't derail me from my goals.

And with that, it's nearly 11 PM.  I need to be up in 7 hours, and in that time I need to get a good night's sleep, so off I go...