Block? Is this what Writer's Block is? Where is my muse?

I have come to the shocking realisation that tomorrow is the last day in February and I haven't really settled into a writing routine yet.  I don't feel inspired so I make excuses and do other things to keep myself busy - it's extraordinarily easy to keep busy when there is something one feels one should be doing.   My current book is not even a quarter through yet I am doing very little writing - I know what the next part of the story line is but find I am not inspired to write it.  Sometimes I sit down, knowing I only have a short time and write a couple of pages but this isn't how I normally write.  With my first three books I sat down at my computer at every opportunity and felt compelled to get the story down, as though it would slip through my fingers like water if I didn't. 

But it's not really a block - it's more of an apathy.  When I was writing Rock-a-Bye Baby, which was my fifth novel, it actually started as my third then I wasn't sure how to proceed so put it on one side then I woke up one morning with But a Dream in my head and hastened to write it down, which I did within a month.  It was only much later that I went back to Rock-a-Bye and just wrote it.  I know that when I have the characters and the basic storyline the rest just comes as I write it.    It may sound ridiculous and pretentious but the characters tell their story, often surprising me in the process.  The ending of Fisherman's Dream wasn't at all what I had thought - but that's what came out and I was happier with it than with my first idea.

So it must just be laziness.  The trouble is I need a deadline and it needs to be a tight deadline otherwise I prevaricate.  I have set myself a deadline of finishing the first draft by the end of March - so have frittered away January and February - come March I will need to write around 1500 - 2000 words a day.  It's not such a lot when one gets down to it.    It all boils down to discipline, I suppose.  It's never been my strong point!  I think back to my schooldays - Monday morning in the train wasn't really the best time to be doing my weekend homework.    Too easily distracted that's me - now I really must take the dogs for a walk before going to my bridge club, perhaps tomorrow I'll get down to some steady writing, after doing the washing, weeding the garden, going to my aqua aerobics class and of course the dogs always need walking!  

Till next time :)