Dilatory

Today's word of the day is dilatory--inclined to defer or put off what ought to be done at once; given to procrastination; delaying; loitering. This is definitely me now. I am being completely dilatory.

I am one chapter away from finishing the first draft of my young adult novel and I am able to come up with 100 things I should be doing instead of writing. I just went down to the kitchen and cleaned out the fridge. Next, I was thinking of using Fifi as an excuse because even though she is nestled asleep on my lap, she is really needing a walk right now. And then of course, there is the ever so popular, I must post something on my blog and I should do it right away.

You see, the excuses, the reasons, the explanations of why I am not writing that last chapter are endless. But really, maybe it is just because I'm scared. Scared that what I will write will be no good. Scared that what I have written to date is garbage... And yet, I have to remind myself, this is just a first draft and I have my own permission to write the worst prose, the cheesiest dialogue, the most cliche scenes, and that I can worry about fixing and polishing it later. And yet this elusive later is now right around the corner. After this chapter is written it is time to begin the RE-WRITING.

And, in the end, maybe I should take Oscar Wilde's words to heart ("Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes.") and claim all my mistakes, my shoddily written paragraphs and predictable plot lines as invaluable experience for a beginning writer. Either way, most writers claim that only about 10% of their first drafts make it to the final project. Oh my, I better get to work if I want to have a showable, readable draft finished before the baby comes. Okay, enough delaying, stalling, temporizing, time-wasting, filibustering. I have a chapter to write.