Time to put up or shut up

Tomorrow (today, technically)is my first Monday as an 80-percenter: I won't be going to work. Instead, I will be booting up that file called "firstdraft" that I haven't touched since December and seeing what I can salvage.

I was reading my rock-star friend Jenn Shreve's blog and found a link to a blog by a friend of hers, Colin Berry, who moved out to the country intending to reboot his life as a writer. His entries are really compelling; it's why I'm up so late. When I read one particular post I felt a shock of recognition. An excerpt:

Maybe the writer’s task, no matter where he or she lives, is always the same: to carve out from the mountain of your life the time you need to do your work, turning a deaf ear to daily detail, to the ticking of the clock. Maybe no matter where I live — at Dragon’s Lair or in a city — the temptation to procrastinate or distract will be the same, and at some point I have to just say: That’s it. No more. Everything else has to stop. I’m a writer, and diversion (MSW’s thesaurus: hobby, leisure time) is my mortal enemy. I renounce it without apology. This is no hobby. This is my heart, my blood; the epicenter of my life.

He's right. Tomorrow I start writing again. I must. That's it. No more procrastinating.