I hate writing! (that's a lie...)

I don't really hate writing. I hate the feeling that I absolutely have to write or else I'm going to completely lose it. And when I have days like this, when I try to write and nothing sounds right and I end up deleting everything, it almost makes me wish I didn't write. Almost.

Then I have to think of how great it feels when everything is flowing, and the words are coming out exactly the way I want them to and the scene is everything I want it to be, and when I'm done I feel lighter, almost relieved to have gotten the words out and am able to see the concrete evidence that I'm making progress.

Today was not one of those days. In fact, even this blog I'm writing isn't coming out the way I want it to. And if I go back and try to make it clearer, explain better what I'm feeling, it won't work. Which is exactly what happened when I tried to work on my romance novel earlier. I couldn't write anything coherent, and then I just went back to what I already wrote and started to rearrange it, which frustrated me more because I don't like to edit at all until I'm much further in or even finished writing the entire book.

The result is that I feel like a failure and that this day was wasted, especially because I got off work early and had plenty of time to write. Realistically I know this day wasn't wasted, hey-- I went to work, I got laundry done, cleaned the house (somewhat), and started dog-watching my friends annoying little mutt, and I also distracted myself reading and talking to friends. The truth is that I never feel like I get enough done. I could sit down and write ten pages, but if the groceries don't get bought and I spend more time on facebook than I should, I beat myself up.

I'm not one of those people who can do everything that needs to be done and not get distracted reading or messing around on the Internet. I'm not one of those people who can sit down and set myself a certain timeframe to write and then actually do it, as much as I wish I was. But now that I've taken the first step (admitting I have a problem) I'm going to move on to accepting it.

I'm going to write when I feel like it, and not beat myself up when I don't.

If I try to write and the words won't come, I'll close the computer and comfort myself with the knowledge that in an hour, or a day, or a week, they will.

I'm going to do my best to keep up on the laundry and the cleaning, and keep it from piling up so that I spend an entire day cleaning when I feel like I want to write.

Smoothie story of the day: Mispronunciations of names of smoothies. How sad is it that people don't recognize that word "toucan" as in the bird? One of my favorite smoothies is the tropical toucan (peach, mango, strawberry-kiwi, orange sherbert) and I can't tell you how many people have called it the "Toe-can", or the "Tow-can", or drawn out the last syllable with a long a. Other favorites: Tangy mango- tan-gie, berry bopper- berry booper. And don't even get me started on acai!