You know the drill. You start out with a grand and noble idea to write every day without exception.  But, then things happen.

Your little brother and his wife and ten kids decide to visit for a month. When unexpected events occur, it’s perfectly understandable to reprioritize your schedule a bit.

Of course, you may find other excuses to not write — ones that are not so noble and that make it harder to explain why you didn’t quite meet that deadline. The following examples of excuses were shared by a freelance writer who has experienced those bad writing days.

10 reasons why I’m not going to write today:

1. Not enough time in the day. This needs no explanation. I just have a lot of other commitments that need to be done.

2. I don’t know what to write. My mind is blank. Nothing enters or leaves the black hole of my mind.

3. I don’t feel like writing. Some days this just happens and what can I do? Nothing. It’s how I feel and that’s all I can say about it.

4. I want to do other things. I have a long list of the other things. In fact, almost anything I can think of sounds better than writing.

5. I’m not seeing any results, so why bother?

6. My writing is not improving. It is just the same as it was yesterday and the day before that. When is it going to improve? This is taking longer than I expected.

7. I’m revealing too much of myself in my writing. It’s true. Even when I write about dull things like 10 ways to eat more vegetables, my friends say they immediately recognize I’m having a bad day.  This is not good.

8. I don’t know enough about the topic. Other people know more than I do and they write better too. I will only embarrass myself by pretending to be an expert on a topic, especially this topic. Yes, I do realize I know more than 90 percent of the population, but that big 10 percent that knows more than I do has me crushed.

9. Writing is hard work. I never realized this. Things just don’t flow. Those words need to be pried out of my skull with a pickax and a crowbar. I don’t have the energy for this.

10. This deadline is making me too depressed to write.  Why did I ever say I would write this? Can I plead insanity?

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