I Met My Goal - Now What?!

I am truly blessed to now be able to work from home. My "paid job" hours are in the evenings and weekends, and I have all day during the week to write. My original plan was to spend all this new time doing the following: exercise after the kids left for school; eat a healthy breakfast and then shower; clean house for an hour; and then head to my office (in the back of the house) and write for about 4 hours. Then, I would start dinner early, get the kids from the bus stop, eat dinner, and head back to the office for my paying job.

The reality? You guessed it! I sleep until an hour after the kids have left, eat stale donuts and sugary tea, don't exercise, shower (but I've since stopped wearing makeup, shaving my legs, and drying my hair), putz around the house for a few hours, do laundry, watch TV, chat with friends, get the kids from the bus, scramble up dinner, and then come outside to start the paying job with nary a written word done for the day.

What's wrong with this picture?! Laziness? Procrastination? Fear of the Unknown?! All of the above? I dreaded writing this blog entry on this subject because it makes me almost embarrassed that I was so gung-ho about getting to work from home so I could write more, and here I am, doing nearly diddly squat. In the three months since I left my 9-5 job, I have written about 40 pages. At the pace I had set for myself, I should have had a complete new book finished.

Okay, honeymoon's over. I will make a dreaded list and start working off that. I did meet with a new critique partner/writing buddy this week and have plans to meet her next week. So that counts as writing. I did work on a submission letter for my nearly-finished historical romance, so that counts. I used the word "pen" in a sentence today. Does that count?

As for the other unwritten pages and wasted hours where my butt was not in the proverbial chair? I can't get those back, but I am going to start NOW. Once a week, I will be sure to post my progress and upload a sentence or paragraph I either just wrote or have revised. Warning: the writing sample will be crazily romantic, at times silly or melodramatic, godawful terrible, or plain genius. I just have no idea how to determine that.

If you'd like, please comment on how you get past procrastination, or what you did when you reached a goal in your life. Celebrated a giant weight loss with an entire box of candy? Saved money and then blew it all on something trendy? Or were you more practical, and took the grateful option? Please let me know!