My word count on my novel will be pathetically miniscule this week, as I have suffered a major setback. That setback was not medical, mental, or spiritual. It was merely a side-effect of my inability to focus on anything for any extended period of time.

Sometime this past weekend, I caught on a great (or so I thought) idea for a short story. And it wouldn’t leave my head, no matter how hard I shook it. It was bad enough, that I couldn’t concentrate on the novel, since the genres for the two concepts were diametrically opposed to each other. So, I told myself that I would take a day away from the novel to hammer out the short story, get it out of my head, and then carry on with the novel.

You can probably guess how that brilliant plan worked out.

Here I am, I haven’t touched the novel in three days, and I’ve been struggling to pull this threadbare short story concept together. I’ve pulled too much mental capacity away from the novel, and now even thinking about it makes me cringe.

Yep. I derailed myself.

All this situation does is serve as a gentle reminder to several great truths.

1) Writing is work. Let no one ever tell you any different.

2) Stopping one sort of writing to do another, different sort of writing does indeed kill motivation. Now I don’t just have someone’s word on it, I have personal experience to back me up.

3) The wife was right.

So, tomorrow I pull myself back up by the bootstraps and attempt to salvage this derailment before it becomes a full-blown train wreck. The short story gets shelved. The novel gets my full attention again. And I go back to work.

Right after the presidential debates. D’oh!