I cannot explain why I have been doing it, but the best way to describe my avoiding doing some serious fiction writing is to just say, I have been dithering.  I have been doing a lot of thinking about my story, central characters and some of the dialogue but I can’t seem to get myself to sit down and hammer out the story, words, and all the little insights I like to put into my writing.

It isn’t that there are not a lot of things to write about.  I have been avoiding my fiction in order to handle the huge load of non-fiction that waits out there to be paid attention to.  It is so easy to find a topic that gets the blood moving and set up my titles and the descriptions that seem so easily to fall into place.  I know that a part of my mind is working on knots in my fiction story but I seem to be satisfied to do my page a day and then get one of the books from the library and get into bed (my favorite reading position) and throw myself into someone else’s story.

I think that dithering can be counted among the most important occupations available to usually thinking and doing individuals.  In my case I am not happy and would like to get to what I consider my important work and time is wasting.  In fact the best descriptor of dithering is wasting time. You may not know this and I might not look like a ditherer, but I am right now doing a great deal of very high grade dithering and wasting precious time.  I have a limited amount of the latter that is available to me and it weighs heavily on my mind that I cannot break this log-jam of thoughts and get down to my proper business.

I guess the proper word to describe my reluctance to get to work is writer’s block.  That is not my case at all.  I know what I am to write about and have written about it before but I guess my ambition has gotten in the way of years of putting off getting to do this story.  My block is probably being afraid to finally get to the point where the test arrives or the term paper is due.  They are difficult things to deal with at any age.  At my age, when time is fleeting, I would think that I could put aside my reading and willingness to do any other job in order to avoid my fiction story.

I remember the routines of clearing one’s desk, arranging pens and lining up paper in neat piles, making sure that the light is just right and there are no distractions.  Doing that is avoidance and can only take up a little time.  With me it probably is the possibility of failure – that what my story is about has little merit.  That sort of puts a damper on actually sitting down, writing and finishing it.