Melinda Hammond/Sarah Mallory Muses on The Art of Positive Thinking

All writers know about displacement activity, that time when you know you should actually be committing words to paper for your latest work of creative genius but Other Things get in the way. All those boring, tedious little jobs become highly important - the sudden need to check emails, or even the realisation that disaster will strike if you don’t iron your socks. Normally, I fight these displacement activities as hard as the next writer (which means, sometimes, I don’t fight at all) but all this time wasting can make one feel very inadequate.

However, this Easter, I tried a different tack: I positively EMBRACED the displacement activities and looked upon them as a way of… wait for it…keeping fit!

My desk and computer are tucked away in a corner of the house as far away from the kitchen as possible, so every time I “needed” to get up for something – a cup of coffee, breakfast, a cup of tea, lunch, more tea, putting in the washing, tea, checking the calendar, ironing – I looked upon it as Exercise.

Do you know how bad it is for you to sit at a computer for more than twenty minutes at a time? The risks of eye-strain, RSI, back problems, neck problems plus Secretarial Spread (as it used to be known in the office).

So whether I am getting up and walking the length of the house and back, or running upstairs to make the beds (I told you that even the most tedious jobs become very tempting when one reaches a difficult point in the current masterpiece), this is positive good for me! Think of all those calories I am using up, all those muscles I am toning!

Okay, so nothing has really changed, it’s just that I feel so much better about myself……

Linda's/Sarah's latest book out this month is WICKED CAPTAIN, WAYWARD WIFE

When young widow Eveline Wylder comes face to face with her dashing captain husband - very much alive - she is shocked, overjoyed...and furious! So, whatever his explanation for his outrageous deception, she'll keep Nick firmly out of their marriage bed.

Eve's sheltered innocence bewitched Nick, but it's her fiery anger that captures his adventurer's soul! Now the daring ware hero faces his biggest challenge yet - proving to Eve that his first duty is to love and cherish her, for always!

www.melindahammond.com

www.sarahmallory.com