The terrible urges of the daemon

Yesterday my box of Rita books arrived. It is one of the great perks of being a member of the RWA. Lovely new authors to read, and books that I might not have picked up on my own. I always reacquaint myself with the judging standards as well.
The only trouble is that my daemon sees the pile of books and goes -- oh good, a chance to play. Michelle won't want to write. Or whispers of stories will start to come in my brain.
Luckily currently BOTH of my critique partners are sitting with big whips. They do not take many prisoners either and have explained where they think I have gone wrong. It is now up to me to FINISH THE STORY.

Focus is such an important quality for a writer. You have to be able to cut out distractions. You have to be able to concentrate on one story at a time. I tend to be a monogamous writer. Some writers are polygamous but then my daemon goes skittering off. I do believe there is ALWAYS one story I want to tell more than the others. Sometimes the pure physical work of writing down an idea helps. In this case though, it is an idea that I have been toying with on and off for the last nine months. I know a bot more of how it would be done, but what I don't know far outweighs what I do know. The mythology may be in place but is the story?
I need to finish the current story. And probably write another story and then maybe I will have time.
Focus means that I get my word count done and that I actually work on furthering my knowledge of craft and the business. But without more stories for the shopfront, there is little I can do. Story is king and being distracted from my current wip is not good.
So it is a small matter of upping the stakes and making sure the tension really sings.
It is also giving myself permission to write crap and really meaning it. In other words not letting my words harden to the consistency of cement but being open to taking taking flight. So it is a small matter of resisting the terrible urges of the daemon.

In other news:
My dd's mocks came back as expected. She will be working harder on her French. She knows what she needs to do. They are pointers only. And a bit like her mother, she spends far too much time reading romance rather than acutally studying and making sure things are perfect. My eldest is taking his next exam today (not a resit) but thinks he knows the math. he has learnt the value of studying the hard way. It is terrible to look at a math paper and think -- I knew this 25 years ago but now it might as well be Sanskirt.
The electrician has taken away the hall lights and is rewiring them as it appears to be a fault with the wiring. Nothing to do with the leaking shower then.