I tried to be on top of things this month.  There was so much I had intended to do…

The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men
Gang aft agley,
An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,
For promis’d joy!

(Robert Burns, To A Mouse, On Turning Her Up In Her Nest With The Plough)

The schemes of this here fox are no different, it would seem.  Not all of my distractions were necessarily bad, though.  For instance, I spent a lot of time doing things with my wife, such as playing games and watching Castle, since she was still on vacation for the first week of January and then had a week of inservice.  And I’m glad I did.  It just means that I wasn’t spending that time working on what I had said I would write.

I also need to devise a way to make my personal deadlines mean something.  Having a teacher, professor, colleague, or boss set a deadline ensures that I do all I can to make that deadline.  But when the deadline maker is myself…  You’ve seen what happens.  Now that I have a calendar again, perhaps I’ll get better at deadlines (since now they will have a physical existence).

I’ve also realized how integral having a hard copy is to my writing process.  For something like this rambling, which doesn’t represent much of an intellectual effort, I don’t need to look over a hard copy for editing and revising.  But for poems, stories, essays, and the like I do need a hard copy.  There’s just something about being able to feel my words with my fingers that helps me revise them.  And to be able to see multiple pages at once, something my netbook’s screen doesn’t really facilitate.  So let me rage here against my current lack of printing machinery! RAWR!!    In any case, I will be having my “essay” on story adaptations printed so that I can revise it to actually make sense and have an organization to it. _(yay)

All of which to say, yes, indeed, I dropped the ball here and let it bounce away.  Further away than it should have gone.  Over the fence and down the road that took me to the Lonely Mountain following the scent of Thorin and Company.  (You do also realize that there is a fox in The Lord of the Rings, right?)  But I’ve gone bounding after it.  And I should have what I promised to have for you last month by the end of this month.  Which, if you think about it, isn’t too far off…  And if George R.R. Martin can be long overdue on his books, then I can be somewhat overdue…?  Maybe…?  Oh, alright, I’ll make it my impossible task to improve on my timeliness when it comes to self-imposed deadlines.  I hope you’re happy, inner-critic.  Because if by the end of this year I haven’t improved, then I may just toss you out the window of your tower.