Failing to Plan, Not Planning to Fail

All Saturday and Sunday, I hoped to get ahead of Middle Passages for the week. The schedule will be full and writing a post or two in advance would free up some time. I am aware that some of the reigning masters of the blogosphere, write their weekly posts in one sitting and portion them out day-by-day. I bow down to their planning and, well, their planning. As more of a proverbial, by-the-seat-of-my-pants kind of gal, occasionally I jot ideas down for future posts, but as of now, I’ve used those up. In truth, the vast majority of topics for Middle Passages come to me the day of, or even while I’m writing, and with appointments almost every day this week, it seemed like getting a jump on a post or two would remove some last minute stress from the agenda.

With that in mind, Saturday, while I transplanted Foxgloves and Jacob’s ladder, hacked out the ferns overtaking the day lilies, raked up a million pine cones, turned my arms to jelly trying to scrape green moss from our patio pavers and lugged piles of winter debris to the mulch pile, I thought about what to write for your reading pleasure. Sorry to say folks, I came up with nothing. Nada. Zilch. Zero. For a brief moment, as I stooped down low to remove dandelions at the roots, a “digging deep” theme hovered, but it floated away like the cotton seed-heads would have in a few weeks, if I had left the yellow weeds alone.

There was still time though. Yesterday, as I grocery shopped, baked gingersnaps for the senior center coffee scheduled for this morning and, I confess, sat in church during a late afternoon service, I thought about what to write. I failed to pray for an idea though; maybe that’s where things went wrong. Even while draining pasta for dinner last night I felt confident that I could still squeak out a post if only I had something to say. Falling asleep on the sofa at 8:00 did not help with this mission.

Here's the thing. In spite of my inability to conjure up a blurb for Middle Passages, it was a good writing weekend. Between Friday night and Monday morning, I wrote six pages of Morning Pages as directed by Julia Cameron in The Artist’s Way. And, with out planning to (hmm...), in place of Morning Pages on Saturday, (at Simon's suggestion, see below) I wrote a bit of flash fiction based on a daydream I created to put myself to sleep the night before. Try as I might though, I could not come up with a blog post.

So there you have it. A not post. The best I could do. Who knows what tomorrow will bring?

How about you? Do you plan your posts in advance?

Contest Alert!
Two of my favorite bloggers, who are both both clever, witty, funny and above all, talented writers are holding contests, if you are so inclined. Simon, over at Constant Revision is holding a contest to celebrate 250 followers, and Carol, over at Carol's Prints is celebrating 300 followers. Stop over for some fun...oh, and prizes too! If you do visit Simon or Carol and decide to follow them, please let them know that I sent you! ;)