I’ve been distracted, lately. Because of the usual – trying to get the kids to eat something other than Nutella-slathered waffles; wedging myself onto rush hour subways and then propping myself up at my office desk for 8 hours; hacking triffid-sized weeds out of the garden. These sorts of distractions don’t usually keep me from writing – but there are other, bigger ones, at the moment, that are.
Once upon a time, I could write through anything. “This’ll make excellent fodder,” I’d think, of whatever turmoil I was navigating. “I can’t wait to get my hands on my Lucky Writing Pen and my Three-Ring Binder Paper of Inspiration.” Not any more. Now big distractions shut the words – and even the desire for them – down.
Here’s where I benefit by not being a full-time writer. I can sit on the porch with a glass (or so) of something chilled and white and wait for the alley across the street to disgorge a passel of raccoons – and not write. I can lie in bed eating chocolate-covered jujubes (yes, I know – but try them) and watching Game of Thrones – and not write. I don’t have a contract for the next book, just as I didn’t have one for the last, while I was working on it. No one’s expecting me to produce any words at all.
This is good. It is: the pressure’s off. I’m crafting stories for their own sake, in the slow, linear, don’t-know-how-they’re-going-to-end way I have, and there’s something lovely and pure about this. I have a day job; I’m not dependant on my books for the money it takes to provide a home for the kids and the triffids.
And yet: the pressure’s off. I miss the necessity of writing. I miss saying, “I’m a writer” when people ask me what my day job is. I miss forcing my way through those first, necessary molasses-words of the morning and coming up with the few that make me forget distractions, for a bit.
Other contracts may well come along – though I hear it’s getting harder for even established authors to land these without a completed manuscript. I’ll probably never quit the day job. But one thing I am sure of is that my deep-as-guts desire for new words will return, once things settle on the outside.
In the meantime, I’ll sit on the porch and raise a glass (or so) to those raccoons.
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