Distraction 8, Arlene 2

That’s right: Distraction is whupping my rear in a big way these days. If there’s a down side to being a Golden Heart® finalist, that would be it.

Until recently, I had a routine: A little writing/blogging before and/or after work. Now, with all the new and ramped-up tasks on my to-do list, I spend way too  much of my time trying to focus on any one thing.

And the task at hand is rarely writing.

This morning, it was updating my website. I just switched from wordpress.com to wordpress.org so I can make better use of the arlenehittle.com domain name I purchased last year.

While it was relatively easy to make the change, I still have to rebuild a lot of things, like my blogroll. I also must figure out how to get a cool stats tracker in my dashboard and get on the phone with the webhosting folks to figure out how to configure my computer … I kept getting an error message involving a firewall and it was like it was written in Russian. I’m not even sure where to find my firewall.

Yesterday morning, I managed to write a couple hundred words. On Sunday I eked out a full thousand … and then decided to scrap them all and start the scene in a different place.

I’ve heard other writers say that they spend very little of their time actually writing new stories. I now know exactly how they feel.

Well, it’s off to accomplish something before bed.