Slight of Hand

There's a funny thing about writing and not writing. When you're doing either time disappears.
Here's a case in point. Your taking your first blurry, morning, slurp of coffee for the day. Eyes hardly open, head foggy with sleep and a single thought makes it through the haze, I'll write today.
Sounds good, right? You feel good about it because now you have a plan. Not a great plan, not much detail, but it's a plan.



Now it's evening and the final credits of your favorite show are rolling up your TV. With nothing to occupy your mind you enter that brief Zen state where your mind clears, until the next commercial where the baby tells you about stock investments, and it hits you. Oh crap! I didn't do any writing.  You look at the clock. It's 10:30 at night! Where did the time go? It's like a slight of hand trick where you have the entire day ahead of you and 'poof'. Gone.

The Devil is in the details. I know that if I tell myself I'll do something today, and that's the extent of my plan I'm doomed to failure. I've learned this lesson years ago. Don't get me wrong. I still do it and I still fail. No idea why I keep stumbling over this bad habit when I know better.
I have to commit to putting it into detail. Just throwing an idea into a bucket-of-the-day will not work because from the time I go to bed the night before until the next day is over I'm throwing all kinds of things into that bucket and the thought of writing is quickly buried under everything else.

When I put a time to it, and set a reminder to go off at that time I never have a Oh crap! moment. It's a funny thing how I can have such a passion for writing and at the same time trip myself up to not do it.

What are the ways you keep yourself in the habit of writing? Do you tie a bow on your finger? Leave a note on the kitchen table? Super glue your laptop to your hand?