Notebooks and other Accessories

Remember foolish me saying my job was a step in the right direction? There is also a downside to writing eight hours a day: You are severely unlikely to feel like doing more writing when you get home. It’s the ultimate excuse. It’s on the long list of things I need to stop doing (or start doing). But you know, here I am, typing away (not on the book that badly needs one more edit, but anyway…), starting my great new life as someone about to become a published author. Someone destined to be in the reasonably priced car. See? It’s important to have a goal, even if it is a little ridiculous. No one ever specified that goals have to be serious and deep, did they? And as you can see, I have even managed to type out my first set of notes, which is an almost unprecedented event.
(Let’s take a moment a appreciate the fact hat I am the type of Neanderthal who scribbles things in a notebook an realises only weeks later that the words should be displayed on the internet, or at least typed up. Thank you. This is the kind of Cromagnon you are dealing with. And at an IT convention, for god’s sake.)
So me and the book are on our way.

If only to meet the first immediate obstacle: My obsession with accessories. Instead of editing, typing and updating like a sonofabitch, I am making my work buddy design shiny banners, fantasise about getting stickers printed…in short nothing other than me playing out the backdrop for actions that never come into fruition occurs. It may not sound like a big problem to you, but it actually makes my life hell, this accessory obsession.
When I got my new job for example, my fancy sit-down job, the first thing I did was to go out and buy a lunch box. Pink, with rainbows and skulls, a wonderful thing. But the bottom line is that the careful process of choice and purchase of this lunchbox took 100% priority over preparing for the job I had been hired to do. I should have been reading up on horses and races and the rules for both. Instead I spent a what felt like an entire day in front of shelves displaying shiny kids lunchboxes.
Same with the book that will be published (and if it kills me…). Instead of doing a line edit, I am way too busy thinking of a cool cover design and dreaming up the blurbs and critiques displayed on the back of my masterpiece. I may not know what I will be reading at my first book signing event – but I sure as hell know what I will be wearing. At least I can safely say that half of my affairs for the writing life are in order. I have great notebooks and pens, strategically places stickers on my laptop and nice folders to keep my reference material organised. They may be empty but they’re really colourful.
In terms of visuals I’m so on top of the situation it’s not funny – now all there is to do it match up the inside, work ethics and diligence and reasonably priced car here-I-come.