I’ve got two books now that I’m working on. There’s this year’s Hike with Me, which will be called Idaho Centennial Trail Frank Church Finale. I figured calling it Part 3 would imply that more parts could follow, so I settled on Finale as the best indicator of triumphant completion. Then there’s my other book that I’ve been chewing on for nearly a year now. Kind of self help, kind of philosophy, mostly about creating a framework for self improvement. 

I haven’t made much headway on either of them in the last month. I’ve been writing in fits and starts. Mostly fits. My mind is getting easily distracted by my body’s woes. I use my willpower to focus enough on work to get that done, but then I hardly have any left to focus on my personal writing work. 

My tummy has been rough for most of the summer. I got a new issue of throat gunk, which turned into tonsil stones while I was hiking through the Frank, and then cleared up briefly only to return, along with something like heartburn, despite a course of Prilosec. The sensations are painful, but during the day I can ignore it in favor of doing other things. It’s at night that I run into problems, because I’m trying to empty my mind and relax and the painful sensations just get louder as my mind gets quieter. 

I have a pretty good writing set up at home now, and I need to actually utilize it. I need to carve out time and energy for getting my butt in the chair. Otherwise, I’ll never read Ambrose’s or Bill’s accounts of the trip! See, I don’t want to read theirs before I write mine, lest I steal a turn of phrase or forget something important to me. Also, it serves as a bit of an incentive to get to writing. 

But I don’t expect that I’ll finish my writing before November. That’s my typical schedule. I will need to start focusing on it at some point to get that done, but there doesn’t need to be urgency yet. If I’m not making headway by September, I’m going to have to institute a minimum word count per day. That usually does the trick of getting my butt in the chair for enough time each day to do the work. 

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