When I said I’d do a guest post, I forgot that this blog was about writing. My current manuscript stared at me ruefully from the corner of my desk and said, “Don’t you do it!”
Foolishly thinking myself up to this obvious challenge I answered, “And why not?” The aforesaid words were punctuated by a crossing of my arms over my chest and a tapping of my foot.
It stared at me in disbelief. “After what you put down in print so far…” It drew up short recognizing the scowl on my face as a bad omen of its future.
“I have been busy,” I tried my best excuse, hoping it wouldn’t see through the lie. Most short stories are fooled by this particular falsehood.
“So why are you just sitting here now?” The question—once voiced—could not be denied. I postured defensively and pretended to look for a pen in my desk drawer. “Is it… twitter?” I could hear the pages shuffle.
“Of course not!” I answered a bit too quickly drawing even more suspicion to my possible lack of fealty.
“Then facebook? I know you have feelings for facebook… I’ve seen how you look at it!” A loud tearing sound issued from the makeshift cover.
“Look, no! Facebook is just… a friend.” I wondered what it would infer from the redness I felt as heat in my cheeks. This conversation wasn’t going the way I’d planned.
“I knew it was the blog!” It drew out the word blog with the most distasteful accent on the term imaginable.
“This isn’t my blog I’m writing for now…” I wanted to take back the words but the damage was done. It could see the truth. An involuntary shudder ran through me as I reached for the pages. “It isn’t what you think…” I softly stroked the paper.
“The reasons you started me? They aren’t gone, immutably changed? Do you even remember?”
I clutched the novel to my chest. There was nothing left to do — except write.
Do you make excuses? What’s your personal favorite?
Brilliant piece, Patrick. Smiled all through it. Writing excuses? A personal favorite of mine would be the three words: “As soon as…” My most productive days happen when I -don’t- do anything else before writing. Not always easy to do.
Thanks for the smiles.
Steve, hope you’re having a good day off.
Great fun, eh? ;)
Thanks :) Lots of writing to do ;)
Steve, you are supposed to be sleeping not writing! hope you get some extra Zs. thanks for letting me right errr write here!!!
LOL. Doing my best, Patrick :D Amazing how fast Zs can be – slippery too ;) A great pleasure! You’ve certainly made a lot of people very happy with the post :)
Lol I aim to make people smile…my mission.
:D
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Clever! My biggest excuses usually centre around my husband or pet care business, or, just lack of creative thinking, or, life in general. We do get around, LOL and sometimes there’s no time for writing. (My writing at this point is ALL blog related – no finished works yet, but have a couple in progress.) I’m having an affair with social media too and that certainly detracts, (but is necessary to be a success in the Blogosphere. Catch 22?)
Always enjoy your humour Patrick. :-) Congratulations on your succ!ess as a published author!
Cute post! It is sometimes soooooo difficult to focus on the writing when there are so many other things that need to be done. (Like reading funny blog posts and commenting on them.)
Humorous and entertaining piece about how we all make excuses at times for not writing when we know that is exactly what we should be doing. Enjoyed this, Patrick!
Excellent post, Patrick :-)
That was hilarious and oh, so true! I try and stay away from as much of the social media as I can, but Facebook seems to be my downfall. And it’s very distracting. :
Great post, Patrick! :)