Last winter, as a blizzard approached, we planned to stay inside, all nice and cozy, and write.  (See How to Write a Book During a Blizzard for details of that fiasco.) Now, as Hurricane Irene nears, we have once again resolved to spend our time writing. This time, we had plenty of warning. We have already gone shopping, the lawn furniture is safely inside, batteries have been purchased, cell phones and laptops charged. Nothing left to do but plot, edit and write. Right?

Well, first we have to check our email because we won’t be able to do that once we lose power. And we’d better take a look at our Facebook page, too. Oh, look a new friend! And a few people have liked our new book trailer. Wait! That’s not the new one. Yes, it is. No, it’s not! Hmm. Maybe you’re right. We’d better upload the new one. (Upload, upload, upload, why is it taking so long?!)

Now Twitter. A bunch of new followers. Better follow back. Some mentions. (TY, TY, TY). A retweet! (TY!). Need to tweet about the new trailer. Hey, that’s a good one! Retweet! And some hurricane info. Retweet that, too. Start scrolling. Interesting… Yada, yada, yada, Hey, that one’s cool! Hmmm, let’s click on that link… Look, some new tweets have come in! Oops! Have we really been on for an hour?

Enough! We’re supposed to be writing. But wait! We haven’t written a blog this week! Can’t we just skip one week? Just once? No! (Horrified look.) Think of something. (Silence.) Well? (More silence.) Well… Umm… (Extended silence.) Are you sure we couldn’t just skip… NO!!

So here we sit writing a blog about how hard it is to find time to write. (Or how easy it is to be distracted from writing. Take your pick.) And now that we’ve finished, we are going to work on our next book.

Right after we take a nap.