It’s noon and I just updated my overall to-do list (not all due today): 14 major categories/clients/things to finish.

My writing group starts in 75 minutes, and I have decided not to go, justifying that I have too much to do.

But that’s not the real reason. The true feet-dragging motivation is because I know I don’t know what the hell I’m doing in that class.

Am I really ready to write fiction again? Is it time to start a book based on this blog? Do I want to spend time critiquing other writers’ works?

I keep coming up with the same answer: No. I’m not ready. I’m not focused on piling on other writing responsibilities right now. My business keeps me busy, and I don’t know what I’d do with new stories or manuscripts I might produce for the class. I haven’t written one new thing since I started working with them. I keep resurrecting short stories I never submitted for publication. They’ve all been critiqued before, and they’re pretty solid. I just don’t want to go to the group empty handed, so I print out the stuff from 2006 and earlier, the last time I wrote creative stuff.

I could use a life coach right now to give me guidance about what I really want to be when my writing business grows up. Am I a fiction writer at heart? A speaker and writer of nonfiction business books? A writer of essays and columns? Or do I really want to completely jump off the writing ship in a couple of years and travel around the world helping out in disaster-striken areas (don’t laugh… this crosses my mind a lot)?

For now, I’m going to work through my to-do list and skip the writing group. Today at least, I’m a business woman with clients to please and marketing to plan. Perhaps tomorrow I’ll see if a pen and paper and a cup of coffee might lead me to write something besides a to-do list for Avenue Z.