To boldly go...to the library

The Ottawa Public Library had planned to overhaul their computer systems this week. In preparation for this, they warned us ("us" being the Kanata Writers' Group) that the room we meet in every second Wednesday evening might be piled around with books that were waiting to to be checked in and re-shelved once the computers were back online.

Unfortunately, things didn't go according to plan, and the library (every Ottawa branch, as far as I know) was forced to shut down completely all day today and tomorrow. So, there went our meeting this week. Nowhere to have it!

Instead, someone had the great idea to have the meeting online in the cool little chatroom one of our members, had set up for us right on the group's webpage. Several people said they'd probably sign in, but only three of us actually did, and one of those left after a fairly brief visit. So that left me and one of the few other female members of the group to chat with each other.

So we chatted. And it quickly became apparent that both of us have a problem with motivation when it comes to our writing. It's not that we don't WANT to write. It's not that we don't have ideas. It's not that we have so many other things to do that we just can't get to it.

It's that we procrastinate. We lack motivation. We lack that undeniable force that makes us put our butts in the chair and just write, dammit!

As we chatted about it, it occurred to me that it would be cool if some of our regular writers' group meetings were used just for writing. But no, I thought, that might be diverging too far from the accepted norm, from the group's comfort level. Normally, we bring stuff to read and then there's conversation about what has been read. It's a great system, but doesn't leave time for other stuff. Well then, I thought, why not do it some other time, then? So I asked my chat pal if she might be interested in getting together now and then somewhere, just to write.

She loved the idea.

I have to admit...I did too! What better way to motivate yourself to do something than have someone else relying on you to do it with them? So, while the entire group has now been invited to join us, at least the two of us gals will be there at the Library every Thursday evening tapping away at our laptops. Mostly we'll be ignoring each other, and the rest of the goings on at the library, but doing what we went there to do: writing!

i'm really looking forward to it!