The Blame Game

As I mentioned in my blog last week, my day job is giving me fits. I’m transitioning to a new position and walking on eggshells waiting for something to go wrong. Thus far the only thing to surface is that everything currently going wrong is my fault. This is what typically happens when someone leaves an organization (at least where I work). It’s easier when something goes wrong to say…

“well you know {name here}. I’m not sure where they were with that when they left and the ball probably got dropped.”

“{name here} was managing that and was having some personal problems, so it doesn’t surprise me that its all messed up.”

I can already hear my name being taken in vain all up and down the hallways. We’re currently getting Playground t-shirts and it makes me wonder if I can get Darling Geek to design me one that says “Scapegoat” with a funny graphic on it.

Anyway, this whole thing has made me think about blame and excuses in general. In the past, we’ve discussed personal accountability and the myriad of excuses we all come up with when our WIP isn’t progressing at all. I could say that I was chugging along until I got the revision letter and now I’m just trying to process it all and see how it impacts my story before I proceed. It sounds good and I guess that’s really what I am doing, but still, it doesn’t matter. Either I write or I don’t. If I do write, I might get published. If I don’t write, I’ll never get published. Words on paper!

Instigator wants to frolic in the sun and do things other than write. I don’t care what I do, I’m just not in a mental state to write. I’m either in the mood or I’m not, a feast and famine writer struggling to keep up with that “1 page a day” mantra that is a polar opposite to how I write normally. I don’t have a muse that I chase around, but sometimes I can just sit and write 20 pages without stopping. Then I won’t open the file for a month. I hate that I write so inconsistently and I need to LEARN how to perform in my writing as consistently as I perform at my day job (which shouldn’t be much of a stretch according to some people).

If you’ve got a process for getting yourself in the writing place, please share it. Some people say certain music gets them flowing, some can only work at certain times of day, some have to plot in the shower or the car before they can sit down and write. Some are just fortunate enough to have built that habit. What do you do?

SP

(Oh and Johnny has nothing to do with the post, really. He's just there to look pretty.)