The muse of nothing

Listen to this.

I finally had a free day. Six hours to myself. Excitement!

I considered all the things I could use the chunk of time to accomplish: work on my book proposal, write blog posts, write an article to submit for publication, finish painting my room.

I decided to write. I can work on my writing ALL day long, thought I. I can churn out ten or fifteen pages of writing. Yes, that's what I will do.

I am a goddess.

I decided to start with the book proposal.

Here's what I did:

• Read an e-book on how to write a book proposal.
• Read sample book proposals.
• Decided which part of the proposal I should start on first: the chapter summaries.
• Changed my mind: the synopsis.
• Thought about how I might market my book.
• Emptied the dishwasher.
• Fantasized about being on Oprah, even though Oprah is off the air.
• Read an article in Oprah on the benefits of creating a daily writing discipline.
• Tidied my room.
• Decided that before I could successfully market my book, I needed to revamp my website.
• Searched the internet for web designers.
• Read a blog post about a new site called Picmonkey, which is similar to (the late, great) Picnik.
• Jacked around with my header in Picmonkey.
• Wrote some friends on Facebook telling them how I was planning to submit two articles for publication.
• Looked at the time.
• Realized my six hours was up.

Daily tally:

Writing: 0 hours

Painting room: 0 hours

Farfing around: 6 hours

Clearly, not a goddess.

* * *

Today is a new day, thought I this morning, upon waking. But my day was full. I had lots of errands to get done. I had very little free time.

But I got up early anyway, set the timer for an hour, turned off the internet, buried my phone under a pillow and wrote two pages of my chapter summaries and a blog post. Then I went about my errands.

I am, quite possibly, a goddess after all.