Yay It's January Pass the Oatmeal

PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT:  in order to make my point, paralleling the obvious challenges of facing the "lose weight" resolution dovetailed with "write more and get more acceptances" floating around out there, I give you a gallery of "hot male personal trainers" (go ahead, google it yourself)






Yeah, I'm on a diet.

Who isn't?

Really, gyms, fitness centers, yoga studios and all those places ought to dub this month "Black January"for all the huge increase in traffic they see.  It's when they really make their money from all the folks who join up, go for about 3 weeks and give up.

It's easy to give up. I know for a fact that it takes AT LEAST six weeks, many times eight to ten to see results from a diet and exercise program.  It's tough. But you gotta stick with it. It sucks to get up on cold Michigan January mornings and choke down another bowl of oatmeal. But you gotta do it.  It's even tougher to drag a** out to whatever exercise venue you choose. But it's a must.

Sort of like the writing process in a way.

You have an idea, and, depending on your "process" you head write, outline, ponder and character map around for a while. Then you get down to it, either by the seat of your pants from the story mostly fleshed out in your brain or from your careful outlines, character studies and notes.  It's a struggle at times. Many nights/days or whenever you have time to create you're tired from "the real world" and just can't sink into the one you've created no matter how hard you try.

"I'll get back to it tomorrow, first thing," you say, around a mouthful of rabbit food, washed down with detox tea.

But tomorrow comes and goes and you find yourself grabbing fast food for lunch, and ignoring that manuscript another 24 hours.

Then, when you finally find time and/or energy you stare at the blinking cursor so long you get a headache and have to lie down, or drink the alcohol you swore off of after that badly considered New Year's Eve mixing of red wine, champagne and post midnight tequilla shots.

What I say to you is more to get me going than anything.

Get off your arse, get to the gym, or yoga studio or outdoors, whatever it is you do to shake 2011 cobwebs out of your brain.

Then sit, write, staying off social networks lest you get depressed by all the GREAT NEWS everyone is bloody well SNOOPY DANCING over or whatever they do 24/7 over there.

Focus.  On Your Goals.

Pass the oatmeal, I gotta edit.
cheers
Liz