Writer, Interrupted

I'm in the middle of a writing marathon. The goal is to have 10,000 words done by tonight at midnight. Now, it's not as crazy as it sounds. The marathon actually started on Monday. Problem is, all week I've not been able to get in front of the computer for more than a few minutes at a time until after 11 o'clock each night, and by midnight I'm fried. To make matters worse, I keep interrupting myself by finding other things to do. And if I don't interrupt myself, someone else in my family will happily oblige. There are so many things to do. If I go to Forward Motion writers' community, I can lurk on the boards there and see what everyone else is up to. I can scare myself with their tales of how one girl's agent let her go because the agent couldn't sell her book, or I can make myself green with envy over the lady who actually has six hours of writing time all to herself every day, or I can go over to another writer's blog and drool over his or her upcoming book tour, or....

Or I can kick myself in the butt, go back to my manuscript right now and just get on with it! I guess I'm hoping that it'll be easier to keep from falling off the writing wagon if I know someone else might be watching--or reading. And the irony is that I really want to write this book. I love this book. It's turning out well, and I'm all caught up with the edits I've been working on since I went to Donald Maass' Breakout Novel Intensive workshop at the end of July. Now it's all new stuff ahead, and I guess maybe I have stage fright or something. I'm standing at the end of a diving board staring down at that wierd blue water below and I'm afraid that maybe I can't swim, after all. And well, no, I can't swim. But I can write. So here I go. Anybody seen the life preserver?