Let’s just say it’s January 1 (or time to eat the elephant)

A few years ago I read about a published author who has spent most of her life easily pulling herself out of moments and writing. Whether during downtime with friends, while waiting for an appointment or standing in line, she’s had no trouble shutting out the world and picking up where she’d left off on her current draft.

In other words, she was my polar opposite. I’ve always struggled with writing. I have a degree in journalism, and I’ve worked in communications in some form for basically 30 years. But dedicating time away from work to the craft is something for which I’ve completely lost the discipline I once had.

So today I try to return to it. At the moment I’m kicked back against the headboard in a Holiday Inn hotel room in the French Quarter while my partner dozes next to me. We’re waiting for a friend of his to arrive so we can begin work on his current creative project: shooting a music video for an amazing New-Orleans-inspired song he’s written. He’s one of those disgusting people who says they’re going to do something — and completely follows through.

As I lament my procrastination and perfectionism, I think about a friend of mine and I who more than 20 years old made a pact to write a draft of a novel within the following year. Never happened. I think of a few years ago when I told my father I “finally had to put together the draft of the novel I’ve had in my head.” And then my best friend and I can’t even discuss the book I’d planned to write about my conversion therapy experience and the other one I planned to write about the Atlanta child murders. (Not even two years later, a lauded book was published and later became a movie about the former and a successful podcast covered the latter.)

Time isn’t going to stand still for me, so it’s time I start exercising the muscles of discipline, habit and creativity every day as a writer. Otherwise I can’t really consider myself one.