I'm Hard at Work on this - Oh look!

My psychologist daughter says that I am not ADHD, but I've always had a hard time sticking to what I should be doing. Right now I SHOULD complete two manuscripts, both sequels to books I've already written. Both stories are outlined and at least 50 percent complete. I need to finish them so that I can submit them and do the promotional dance necessary for keeping my name in the public eye. And I need to finish them so that I can cross them off my to-do list and feel the sense of completion. Whatever.

But as my profile says, I'm happiest when I'm starting a new project. And my publisher threw out a call for submissions of a specific type of story. And the deadline is in three weeks. I thought about it for about ten minutes and a germ of an idea entered my head. And before I knew it I was plotting and planning and researching. A new Scrivener document is started and I've got the first chapter written. Knowing me, I'll have the ending finished by the end of the week. Which means I will have two weeks to write everything in between.

Meanwhile, my two sequels are screaming at me, "Why have you abandoned us?" Sometimes I feel like I'm back in my mom-with-young-kids stage, when I'd be reading with one kid and the other one would need something right now. I'm amazed that they've both turned out to be fairly normal. And then there's social media. I spend WAAYYYY too much time finding out where everyone is, what they're having for dinner, songs that they're thinking about, and the general health of everyone I know and everyone they know. I also get a lot of email I don't need, and in order to find the emails I do need, I have to keep deleting the junk ones, and dealing with the writing business ones as soon as I open them.

Maybe there's a chance my books will all get finished, and they'll be great. But that means I'm going to have to concentrate on writing, and not getting distracted by—

Oh, I've got another email! I wonder who it's from.