Writing when it's not-writing

God, it's tough sometimes to make yourself write something, when what you're going to write isn't what you want to write, and what you want to write isn't going to get written because you put it off for too long and now it's too late to get started on it. But you feel like you need to write something anyway, because you're trying to do more of that, that writing, even if all you're going to end up writing about how much a pain in the ass it is to write when you're writing something that you don't much want to write.

Which is what this is.

So, seriously, if you want to skip this, I won't blame you. Hard to convince you to read something I don't really much want to be writing in the first place.

But here it is anyway.

I should be working on a short film script I've promised some teenagers to cobble together for them, but it's too late to really get the ball rolling on it, because I know it'll take awhile for the ball to reach a decent speed, and by then I'll be all energized from the act of creation and I won't be able to sleep. And I have enough trouble with that already.

I should also be putting some working into an old story idea that got some new material today, or a brand spanking new idea that started rattling around in my head on the drive home.

Of course, I should also be putting some work into the almost-but-not-quite finished novel, because, seriously, I need to get that fucking monster out of the way before I can really make any progress with anything else.

Oh, and there was an editorial I really wanted to try to write for this week's newspaper. That didn't pan out so well either.

Where does the time go?

How can I have the best of intentions for all this writing, and then watch as whole days just whoosh by me without anything getting done? How does that happen?

I didn't even lose the evening to video games today. Sure, I played for a bit, maybe 90 minutes, but that's hardly anything.

90 minutes.

That's shorter than some movies.

That's less than half the running time The Godfather.

It's nothing.

But still, nothing done today. No progress made on any number of projects. What the hell?