Why do I do this to myself? No sooner did I Just Say No to writing so I could focus on research, did I turn around the rifle of best intentions and shoot myself right between the eyes.

Two days off. What that really too much to ask? Apparently, because here I am with two more articles written, and six I need to revise. Fantastic.

It’s not like I didn’t see this coming. I think I laid out pretty well how my thought process was going to go, and I nailed it perfectly. Hours after I posted my Sunday check-in for ROW80, those demons of self-deprecation started with the catcalls.

“Get to work, you lazy bastard.”

To those demons, working means writing, building that word count, and throwing another article at the wolves. Unless it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it’s not a duck.

The same’s true of writing if my inner-critic is to be believed. That miserable little slave driver gives no credit to reading, research, or note-taking. If the fingers aren’t banging the keys, he starts getting nasty. It’s not the healthiest way to approach one’s occupation, but it does keep you on task.

So it’s back to the Fit-the-Research-In-Wherever Approach. I woke up this morning, put my half-open eyes to the task of finding venues for my work, and absorbed the basics of querying; a weird situation that turned the task of research into a race against the coffee pot.

This is one of those posts where I feel obligated to point out a lesson I learned, or offer you some witty piece of advice.

Well, I got nuthin’.