Focus already

I seem to be slightly scattered lately. I don’t think it’s just my imagination. I must be pre-occupied or am thinking too hard on my story and trying to untangle my thoughts. I know I need to go back to my notes and try to reduce them down as far back to bare bones as possible. I need to at least spend some quality, quiet time going over what I have, what is coming next, and the simplest way to get there.
I made a mistake by trying to follow a book that claimed I needed to fill out pages of…here let me pull out my binder…research lists, general setting sketch, plot summaries, character studies, miscellaneous scene notes, dialogue sheets. It’s no wonder I can’t keep anything straight in my head when I go to write. I’ve given myself a terrible handicap by thinking I need to have all that extra bulk of notes without any story written. I can’t keep it all straight in my head and I can’t keep pulling out a binder when I am trying to write.
I knew it wasn’t going to work when I originally started to fill out all the “paperwork” that book had given me. I know I tried to spend a couple of hours making myself come up with it all and realized I wasn’t willing or able to do it. I stopped and (you will be happy to hear) I didn’t fill out much of that big list I have up above. Many of the pages have the titles I listed but nothing entered by me. I didn’t fill them all out and many are in the binder but they are blank. But some a very filled out. Then I have my notes that I wrote longhand on spiral notebook paper that are also in the binder. Then there are the 1200 index cards with various scribbling – okay not 1200 but in my mind right now it might as well be 1200.
So I need to go into my garden of a writing binder and start weeding the bed. There may be a few plants still growing there somewhere, but I need to get the ground cleared and prepared properly for me to identify what I have. Then I will be able to see what I need to do to help them grow and to know what I can add.
I know I can’t keep going on so unfocused. Someone asked me something today and I responded to an entirely different subject because I had writing on the brain. I went on to enumerate a long listed answer only to find out my answer had nothing to do with what I was asked. OH! That!
Yeah, great.
So I need to organize myself soon - as soon as I can be still and concentrate. I really need to go for a run but it’s already getting dark. I should see about making time to really clean out a flowerbed. I really have one in the backyard. I’ve been meaning to do that but it keeps raining…

I seem to be slightly scattered lately. I don’t think it’s just my imagination.
TT