Tina Haapala, Excuse Editor

Recently, I had the opportunity to “get away from it all” and participate in a casual writer’s retreat.  A month or so ago, a few members of my writers group decided it would be a great idea to pick a weekend to head out of town and into the mountains so we could write, write, write!  Most people thought that was a fantastic idea and were all in; after all, isn’t that what we dream of, just some time where we are free from the distractions that are keeping us from achieving our writing goals? However, by the time we were signed up and ready to go, only 3 of us made the trip. Those distractions? Those are called life.  I am just grateful that I was able to rearrange my life in order to go, and I hope the others in my group will be able to make it another time (because there WILL be another time), or they will be able to use the lessons I learned from the retreat in their everyday writing lives. So, whether you are heading to a cabin in the woods, or sneaking in a f...

Today is the last day of NaNoWriMo , and writers around the world attempted to finish a novel – or at least 50,000 words of one (most novels out there are closer to 80,000 words)-- in 30 days. For most, this meant a regular, daily commitment. Others opted for long weekends locked away from the world in order to build up their word counts. Either way, they set time aside and met a personal commitment. Although millions around the world collectively took up the challenge, it was up to each individual writer to do the work themselves. Besides the lessons of time management (you CAN schedule writing time in, even when the rest of your life seems chaotic) and priorities (is another round of Words With Friends important, or is that last 200 words for today?), writers learned the strength of momentum! You remember Newton’s laws of motion , right? Basically, an object in motion tends to stay in motion. This could be a law of creative writing as well. Once your writing creates move...

Image: graur razvan ionut One of the biggest excuses writers have for not writing as much as they would like is lack of time. Sometimes, it is not an unheard of excuse. Most of us have jobs, families, significant others, pets, television, Facebook accounts, Twitter , eating, cooking, sewing on that button that fell off that sweater last year(etc...) to attend to. There are countless tricks we can play with ourselves to sneak by these obstacles and get to the writing table (I've written about some of them before ), but sometimes those obstacles become too overwhelming to ignore. This was the case for me last weekend. I KNEW I had writing to do, but I also had laundry to do; the laundry room was becoming a physical obstacle. Thanks to modern technology, this is a good chore to do while writing. The machine does the washing while I write, the buzzer gives me a chance to stretch while I move the load into (or out of) the dryer. And, besides, it gave me this idea for a blog post...

The excuses we make about our writing are often reflected in excuses we make in other parts of our lives. Here's an example, "based on a true story" (or two). Recently, I left work and headed for the gym. I really was not in the mood to go. It seemed pointless: I sweat inside the somewhat too hot gym just to leave and hit the too hot outside, with humidity, and get in my too hot car that cools off just in time for me to pull into my too hot garage. Recently, I had decided that I was going to set aside an hour a day for my writing. The first day, I was pretty sure that Today wasn't the best day to start this endeavor. I was sure that the writer's block that plagued me the last time I sat down would just come to visit again, so what was the point? Anyway, I was not in the mood to go to the gym. I got to the first light. Right was the way to the gym, left, home. I couldn't get over to the left. Cars in the way. I started up my computer anyway, thinking that ...