I Should Be Writing

Back from the funeral, no major household projects going on, reasonable workload at the office, no upcoming trip to prepare for, the checkbook mostly up to date, household finances needing only 30 minutes to bring them up to date. I should be writing. But I'm not.

Yesterday I posted one of my older poems for critique at the Absolute Write poetry forum. Three crits later it's sinking and will hit the oblivion of page 2 today. That caused me to pull out Father Daughter Day yesterday and go through it last night and mark edits that had either accumulated in my mind or that I saw as I read. That's done, and I'll type those edits today sometime. And I did a very minor critique of another person's poem yesterday.

More than a week ago I began a new article for Suite101.com, about preparing for a deposition. Since I had just done that, I thought it would make for a good article, quickly written. Then the funeral trip interrupted me, and I haven't felt like getting back to it. I even did some key word research using some Google tools, and it looks as if it will be a profitable article. Yet, I just don't feel like writing it.

I suppose I'll snap out of it soon. Maybe if I get those few entries made in my financial spreadsheet I'll feel freed-up to write again. I think what's holding me back is the utter futility of it all. And the realization I'm trying to build a platform that may or may not grow to the size I need. My articles on Suite 101 are getting page views at a current rate of 80,000 per year. That's good! Eighty-thousand people a year are reading my stuff. But almost none of those people are looking for my writing. They are looking for information on something, and happen to find mine by a search engine. So will an editor see all those hits and all those people reading my writing as evidence of a platform and quality writing, or as an accident?

Still, I've nothing else to do but plunge back in and get some more articles up. Three more and I begin earning a ten percent bonus. I could have three articles up in three days. I'll do it. I'll probably get that one article finished and post it tonight, and shoot for having two more up by Sunday. During our weekend trip I worked on the analysis of another Robert Frost poem. That will give me at least three articles.

I still need to articulate steps two and three of my platform-building plan. Maybe I'll make that my next post.