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My past few posts have been stale, and for that I apologize.  If it makes any difference, the REALLY bad ones never made it online, they're still stuck in my drafts folder awaiting editing or execution.  It's starting to look like an emergency room in there, with all the gory mistakes I've got piling up.  In my defense, I think I've discovered the problem, and I'm taking steps to correct it.

You see, for the last few nights I've gotten REALLY good ideas for blog posts, generally while I'm in the middle of brushing my teeth.  Not just topics, no, but whole paragraphs of comic gold.  I blame these bursts of inspiration on Jon Scalzi and Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, whose books I've been reading at bedtime.  They're just such great writers, and their voices, while totally different, are very much in the same vein as how I'd like my blog to sound.  You could say that, for right now, at least, Scalzi and the Yarn Harlot are my spirit guides, or totems, or mentors, or something equally New-Agey and woo-woo.

Right, so, anyway, I'm standing there at the sink, and I'm all, "Aha!  I can write about procrastination, and how nothing would ever get done in the world if we weren't all fundamentally lazy!  Here's a three-point list of funny examples, and the perfect closing statement."  I'm trying to get in the habit of not staying up until 2am writing, though, so I don't rush off to the computer right then, toothbrush in hand.  No, I haul out my phone and jot these ideas down in shorthand in a blank blog post, save it as a draft, then return to it the next day to actually write it.  I don't feel like typing in everything I've thought of with my lefthand thumb, though, and besides, my ideas are so good, they will surely occur to me again once I start writing, right?

Yeah, um, no.

In the morning, I look at the three words I've managed to save, hoping that autocorrect hasn't mangled them all into insensibility, and I draw a blank.  For example, last night's gem reads "news blackout."  Now, I remember I was going to say something about how when I'm on vacation I don't listen to the radio, so I don't know what's going on in the world, and it only rarely changes how my life runs on a daily basis.  I was going to contrast that with my parents, who always wanted to watch the local news every night, ostensibly for the weather forecast (but we all knew it was so they could tut-tut over the crime situation and how awful whatever the current war had been that day).  There might have been something about Jon Stewart, twitter, Facebook status updates, and stuff I happen to see on the home screen of my computer.  But this morning, I sat there looking at it, and nothing came.  So I closed the file and went on about my business.

So now it's 10:23pm, Jason just asked me plaintively if I'm planning to come to bed anytime soon, and I'm still tapping away on the computer.  I think for the next little bit, until I get back in the habit of writing regularly, I'm going to just have to say, "Screw bed-times, I'm writing when I get the inspiration."  Because it'll be fresher, and full of all the awesome stuff I think off while taking my pills and washing my face.  Eventually I need to find a balance between a) actually writing, b) writing well, and c) a reasonable sleep schedule.  But tonight is not that night.