Adding a category cloud in the sidebar made me realize that I really need to do something that will allow me to use the #amwriting tag a bit more.   Actually,  I hardly feel as though I have “stopped writing”.    I am publishing a new 500-word or so post every calendar day,  and on some days more than one post.    I am making a real effort to respond to every comment I receive on this site.   I continue to participate in conversations on Facebook and on Twitter,  as well as private chats and IM’s on lots of different sites.   I can’t honestly say that I have taken any meaningful  break from “writing”.    And yet my plan to quickly update Walking Down The Avenue with a new section on Empire Avenue Missions and push out a version 1.2 early in the new year is,  I am just a bit ashamed to admit,  kind of on hiatus so far.

I could blame poor @Dups and the  #EAv team.    It is true that they are listening to user feedback and implementing some refinements to the new featue.   The fact that you can now target your mission by four fairly limited criteria,  does bring additional functionality to the feature,  although I am crossing my fingers that as Brad Grier indicated in a post in the #SocialEmpire group on Facebook that they may make it possible to restrict Missions by the length of time an account has been active on the Avenue.   This functionality would bring Missions from ‘that’s nice’,  ’through Hey!  I can use this to drive traffic to my new blog’  (how many of you first visited this site through an Empire Avenue mission– leave a comment to raise your hand!) to ‘I can use this to target my book to the folks who need it the most’.   Let them earn eaves for reading a book that they really need to read.    It could be my Eureka!  moment on Empire Avenue.

So I resolve again to put the new blog aside and actually work on writing my book.   (I wonder if my successful writer friends like Brent and Susan  go through this procrastinating sort of routine?)   However of course I am not going to do it until I Schedule this post.   (With a daily deadline I am FAR too anal to leave it until it is the day it is due to start working on it.   And if as I intend I put this in the hopper just before midnight on Tuesday January 17,  I will be two days  ahead on the schedule,  and obligated at least in Theory to open up the manuscript and try real hard to force myself to working on the new section.   And yet I know that my Inner Lazybones  (I KNOW I have to give him a name but unlike Holly I’m not quite self-confident to call him something like Prunebutt) can still make endless excuses.

“But I said this new section was going to be part of the advanced guide,  the book for social media professionals  and I’m scared they will laugh at me and tell me in no uncertain terms that I am not one of them.”   (‘You’ve been making and keeping great friends with incredible people through online connections for more than 20 years now.   You’re even smart enough never  to tell people you’ve been “doing social media” for twenty years.  Why even Anise Smith appreciates that.’)  ”But but but…  you’re doing so good and your share price keeps going up,  and the new blog is really doing well.   Surely you don’t want to stop that!!”)   ‘Well of course I don’t.     I’ve got two days in the can.    I might let you talk me into working on and scheduling a third post,  but if there’s three days in the can  I have no other deadline it is inexcusable not to at least try to complete an assignment’.   “BUT BUT BUT….”

I don’t honestly know what Lazybones will come up with after I schedule that third post.    But who knows,   maybe you will see the #amwriting hashtag from me again before too long.