So Boring!

It's easy for us, as authors, to fall back on old habits. I'm referring to the discipline it requires to sit in front of a computer monitor and type words onto a keyboard for three or four hours a day. It begins after a while to feel too much like work. When that happens, it's break time.

Here's where the old habits come into play. I find myself getting restless at around the same time the characters in my book are getting bored with their lives, usually somewhere in the middle of the story.

This often occurred at work too. When I would get bored with what I was doing, I'd start looking for excuses to do something else.

Nowadays, when this happens, if the phone rings I pick it up. Something never done when I'm at a crucial juncture in my story. I might even find myself entertaining the ideas of telemarketers, asking them to go over that thing about a free iPad one more time. Or, if the phone remains silent, I might again browse the same internet sites I left mere minutes before, hoping for a new e-mail or a freshly posted movie review on Rotten Tomatoes.

Old habits are hard to break, even as you know the longer it takes to write the book, the longer it will take before publication.

Soon I will push through the center of my story and begin the rapid free-fall to its dramatic end. Until then I resign myself to the gods of the internet and to the fate of the telemarketers.

Hey, anybody interested in a free month at Planet Fitness?