I told my husband, “As long as I’m writing a first draft, I’m the dog in that burning house meme.” You know the one I mean. But the hubs, although he plays a lot of computer games, is very Not Online, so I had to get it and show him.
That’s the one. The dog is me. The cup on the table is my manuscript. The burning house is everything else in my life.
When I’m drafting anything, I have a pretty monomaniacal focus on it. I have to or it won’t get done. As long as I’m hitting my word quota more often than not, everything else can go straight to hell. My health. My marriage. My actual house.
My brother is moving out of state next month, and I’m not even as devastated as I should be, because I’m so preoccupied. Which is good, I guess.
It’s a tough stretch, in the middle of the manuscript, grinding away, no light yet at the end of the tunnel. It takes a LOT of dedication. I’m a pretty low-energy, indolent person. I only have so much mental energy to give, and the book necessarily takes most of it.
I was trying to make my husband aware of why I’ve been so flaky lately. And that he’d better get used to it, because I don’t intend to stop writing until I can’t anymore, can’t type or speak, or stroke out and lose my ability to process language.
I used to hate August. Beyond the heat and the hurricanes. Lammas, August 1, was my least favorite day of the year. Because it thrust in my face the fact that another year was more than half over, I had less than half a year to accomplish anything, time was running out …
For the first time in a long time, since graduate school, I don’t feel that way this year. I feel good. I’m not running out of time. Because I’ve been doing what I actually need to. Writing. Just like my dreams told me years ago.
That doesn’t make it any easier. See the burning house meme.
But it DOES make all the time around it easier. Because I can live with myself. As Stephen Pressfield says, I’m doing the work.
Atlantis Fallen 