Distractinated

ISN’T A WORD, BUT IT IS A STATE OF MIND I’ve gotten a little distracted lately, and have been wallowing in a state of distractination for the last wee while.

Nothing has distracted me from my four lessons per week, and nothing could. I was offered a press trip, and okay, I had some conflicts, conflicts that prevented me from saying yes to a first-class tour of Northern California… but there was also the fact that I would miss like, five or six sessions.

But I’ve also been giving serious thought to writing up a proposal for a non-fiction book about da horses. And it kinda wrecked my head as far as posting is concerned.

First, I had to figure out how to write said proposal. The internet, as always, is something of a mixed blessing. The information is out there, of course, but so much of it conflicts, that I didn’t trust. Time to turn to friends, and friends of friends, and find out what I needed to know. I’m still compiling that knowledge — because, what’s the point of starting if I have to start all over again?

Am I confusing distractination with procrsatination? Hmmm, whadday think?

And then I began the odd spate of note-taking in a notebook, with a pen, and everything. I come over all old-fashioned sometimes. This has been fruitful, but I’m still dawdling enough to have so far failed to transcribe the stuff into a doc. I did create a folder on my desktop called THE HORSE BOOK, so that’s something.

The thing that’s been interfering has been thoughts of the structure of the book, and that’s where the posting has presented a problem. I’m thinking discrete essays that have several narrative threads in common. Unless I get a whack of money and can buy a horse, I’m going to have to come up with some other stuff with which to pitch. Because, you see, the idea is to get a helpful advance so that I can buy the horse and then write about it…

It’s a gamble, but the whole point of starting this blog — in the beginning, before I knew how much I would enjoy this — was to make a book. And if I don’t post, I won’t have some material to plumb when the thing starts going.

So, I settled into distractination, and nothing got done.

Looks like things are about to change — to change back, and to go forward.