Oh, hello there, deadline. You are a lot closer than I thought you would be. I can see that I'm not nearly as close to meeting you as I thought I would be at this point in the year, either.

So starting tomorrow, I am going to be on complete social media lockdown -- no LJ, no Twitter, no Facebook or Google Reader, and only the most urgent e-mails -- every day until at least 4 p.m. EST. And if I haven't made my minimum daily wordcount by then, I won't be online after 4 p.m. either.

I still intend to meet all my existing commitments, so if I've agreed to do something for you then you needn't worry that I'm going to drop you like the proverbial hot potato. I'm just having to be really tough with myself when it comes to non-writing distractions, and try to make the absolute best use of my daily writing time that I can.

I hope this is going to turn out to be a positive thing. It's going to be really tough to resist the impulse to check my e-mail and Twitter replies several times a day as I've become accustomed to doing, but I suspect I'm going to have no regrets once I get into the rhythm of it.

Oh, and if you see me online when I'm not supposed to be? Please feel free to call me on it. Not that I expect you all to become my personal Jiminy Crickets, but if you happen to notice I'm falling off the wagon, accountability is good too.

Bye, everybody! See you on the other side!