So tomorrow I’ll do some more writing. That’s the way it’s going right now, in dribs and drabs. I have to tell myself (forcibly) that it’s OKAY. It is okay for this time to be slower.
It’s not like I have a choice.
Well, yes, I have a choice about whether or not to play the Sims 2 or watch a movie or spend time with my kids or husband or write…I always have that choice. But I don’t really have a choice about taking my cat to the vet or being with her as she passes from this life. It’s taking a long time. I’d hasten the process, but circumstances are preventing it. So it’s a waiting game right now. I don’t have a choice, either, about taking my kid to the doctor, or going to the grocery store, or doing housework. (I guess I have a choice about the food and the cleaning, but since I like to eat and a messy house destroys my sanity, it’s not really a choice.)
I know when the summer ends and the school year starts I’ll be back to work with a vengeance and any work I do right now will only help me along, but while I know this and I actually have started enjoying “slacking off” (haha, in between ferrying children and cleaning the house that gets twice as dirty with everyone home) I also know that I’m a writer. I write. It’s what I do. It’s more than just the money, though more would be nice. It’s the fact that I have stories to tell and being a writer is so entwined with who I am that I can’t just quit.
It could very well be easy to slack off now, with a bit of success under my belt. I could ride on those books, for awhile. I could rest contented knowing I sold five books to Spice, and they’re good books. Two are getting critical praise and the others might follow. (Or might not.)
But I don’t want to rest. I don’t want to stop. I want to keep going until my name needs an entire shelf in the library. I want to keep working and writing and creating; I want to keep doing what I’ve been doing because so much of me is tied up with being a writer I’m not sure what I’d be or do if I was something else.
So I’ll work in dribs and drabs and run here and there and clean and do laundry and cook dinners and bite my nails and bang my head on my desk with frustration at the constant cries of “MAMA!” and bemoan my lack of time to write; I’ll sit on the beach and read and eat too much and think about books and maybe write some ideas; I’ll never get around to the projects I’d planned to do this summer when I had so much “free time” but I’ll still, at the end of it…be a writer.
M
