Time, Time Everywhere and Not a Word to Write

I'm a middle school teacher. (I know, "God bless you," right? Yup. God bless me, please!!)

Every year, I tell myself that when summer comes around, I will devote all my time to writing and boy, do I mean it! I tell everybody that my summer will be devoted to working on my next novel. Then summer arrives and I find myself on the couch, binge-watching Vampire Diaries or The Witcher while I lament how I never re-achieved my bathing suit body (ok -who am I kidding? There was never a "re" for me!!). I shun the sun and cower under my blankie with my keto ice cream and one of my many cats.

July has already begun and I have only managed to lay out the loose plot for my science fiction novel. Loose plotting constitutes working, right? I consider this plotting thing a huge accomplishment because I'm not a plotter (see my last blog post), but I'm trying to become one. But that's all I've done. Wait - I edited the first 300 words after a ten minute agent critique. That's something, right? I have visions of this really cool space story, but I cannot seem to make myself get to the business of actually writing it. Heck, I'm sitting here writing this post rather than write the story. Whyyyyy??

I think I'm in mourning.

My first novel, The Gate, took over ten years to actually see the light of day. I have a very personal connection to my MC and her plight. Even the world of Karth feels like my hometown and the supporting characters resemble old schoolmates, or cousins, or people I knew "way back when." When I decided to work on this new science fiction tale, I had to pack up the mental station wagon, pull out of the driveway, and leave the city limits of a world I could almost call home. That's big stuff.

I'm uncomfortable in my new surroundings (Saturn's moon, Enceladus), but I know I'll get used to it. I have exactly four weeks before I have to put my teacher pants on again and that's one-third of the time it took me to re-write The Gate after many failed attempts. I can do this, right? I mean, I just sat down and cranked out however many words this post is without the sky falling, so I should be safe to proceed.

In the immortal words of Neil Gaiman:

"This is how you do it: you sit down at the keyboard and you put one word after another until it's done. It's that easy, and that hard."

Amen. Abso-freaking-lutely.

Peace out. I think I'm gonna go line up a few words now.