My Pail Leaks

I really like to write. I really want to write. (And so far I’m on track with my new goals, so that’s good.) So why don’t I write more?

My pail leaks.

By which I mean – I DO write more. I write all the time. Unfortunately, lots of it is not on my book. One reason I didn’t write yesterday is that I was polishing and posting my character notes from my last tabletop RPG game session: 2000 words on what we did, saw, thought, and talked about as we try to solve the mystery our GM has thrown at us. I’m the semi-official archivist for my gaming group, a responsibility I take seriously, and my notes are the nearly-official record of what transpired. But having written that, I was totally done for the day. The day before that I worked on the revision of the materials for my first week of Intro psych classes. This was mostly PowerPoint slides, but it’s still writing: thinking about my audience, what message I want to give, and how best to deliver that message.

All this writing takes the pressure off. My motivation — leaks out. So when I’m faced with something challenging, like Chapter 3 (which I have now started three different ways), I back down.

I don’t know what to do about this. I love my job and my gaming hobby, and won’t be quitting either any time soon. Somehow I need a way to reserve some creative energy for the fiction. This is something I need to work on. Any advice from any source would be helpful!