Desperate Times, Drastic Measures

I am taking myself in hand!

I am writing the final few chapters of 27. I find myself procrastinating a lot lately. When it’s time to write more material, I will for instance, write a new newsletter instead. I’m not altogether sure why this is the case, but I think it has something to do with being afraid of ruining the end of the book. Or that I’ll finish it and be totally dissatisfied with the entire thing. It’s all very silly, but there it is.

And so, I’ve decided to remove as many distractions as possible so that I can finish this bad boy by the end of October. (Even creating a deadline such as this fills my stomach with a vague sort of dread. So, that’s why I must do it, most like.)

One such measure will be: No more brand new newsletters until I’ve written the final word of the final chapter. This will light the proverbial fire under my proverbial tush. My husband has graciously offered to contribute a guest article for next Monday and I may ask other friends and family to contribute if they like. We’ll see what I can scrounge up.

Meanwhile, I will devote every other spare moment I have outside of basic, necessary tasks, to completing this book.

On Saturday, I found myself writing in the unlikeliest of places…curled up in a luxurious queen-sized bed in a massive bedroom on the 7th floor of the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in Washington DC. This is not the sort of place my husband and I can normally afford. I was keenly aware of this as we rattled up to valet parking in our beat up Prius. Our neighbor’s cows knocked the right side mirror off sometime last year and the fender and side are beat up and cracked after a deer kamikazed into it late one night a year or two before that. And we’re too poor to fix any of it at the moment.

So there we were in front of the imposing structure that is the Waldorf Astoria with our beat up car and our beat up clothes and our beat up shoes amongst all the posh puttin’ on the ritz.

I thought the whole picture was rather amusing. Not sure anyone else did, but I’m quite sure the valet attendant had a little twinkle in his eye when I handed out my humble wicker basket with my humble gluten free snacks in it.

Well, the reason we were able to stay there is because my husband is a Fellow at the Club for Growth. This is an organization which seeks to promote conservative and sound economics among elected officials from county, to state, to federal offices. They paid for the room and put on a conference for those rare souls who get beat up day and night by “RINO” Republicans while trying to do the right thing by their constituents. It was nice to see some old friends there and exchange war stories.

The Club for Growth paid for our room which was quite generous, and I thoroughly enjoyed that room. (I was, however, terrified of opening any bottles of water in the room or the snacks in the mini bar for fear we’d get charged an arm and a leg for them!)

All this to say, while Jonathon attended his conference, I holed up in the room and wrote and wrote and wrote until I had written close to 3,000 words,

And I said to myself, “Self, look what you can accomplish when you’ve got nothing else to do but write.”

And so I have decided to put everything else besides the absolute essentials on hold until this book is finished. Of course, there will be edits and rewrites after this. All I intend to do during this period is get what’s left of this story out of my head and on the page.

So, I hope you all understand and won’t be too put out with me.

That’s all for now. Until next time, folks…