Process: Procrastinating

So  many people vowed excitedly to read every excerpt. But what excerpts? Hasn't been happening. My dear friend Helen urged me at the start of the year to begin in earnest. 'Oh all right', I half-joked ... and did nothing. Then she and another friend sent me things about writing every week. Good heavens! Discipline. Commitment. Scary stuff.

Not a problem with poetry, of course. Poetry is my love, my breath of life, my thing I can't not do.  And it can and does happen any time or anywhere.

But I do kinda want to do the memoir. It started tugging at me a little.

Aha – a strategy! A once-a-week date with myself to go out and write. Getting out of the house, where it is too easy to find distractions. Going with the purpose of memoir writing.

I could do it on my beloved iPad, of course. But I want something which reminds me I am SERIOUS about this. (And there are many distractions on a tablet, too.)

So here I am with my even more beloved new 13-inch MacBook Air that my son bought me last month. It's small and light enough to carry in a shoulder-bag. And it doesn't take up the whole damn table, like my old laptop.

I am at Cenzo Café, as usual the only café in town open on a Sunday afternoon. (This is a small rural town.) Even they will close the kitchen soon, at 3pm., but will still be serving coffee and cakes a while longer. I have had my coffee and cake already, to buy my table.

It was very busy here when I arrived, busier than usual. Because of Valentine's Day? That, and being the only option. Luckily their food and coffee are both good.

One of my favourite ways of procrastinating over my writing is to write instead about my writing process. I have just done it again. But Valentine's Day gives me an opening for real journalling: writing about love.

Next post coming up!