The Struggle

I shared during my New Year's goals post that I've been working on writing a novel. I realized I wanted to write this book two and a half years ago, I started writing it a year ago, and I picked it up really seriously again a couple months ago. My original goal was to finish it in November as part of a sort-of-kind-of NaNoWriMo thing, and when that didn't seem quite possible anymore I decided Christmas would be my deadline so I could give the first draft to my dad as his gift. Well, Dad still got everything that's been written, but it's far from done. I'm still loving the process and loving the possibilities of what may or may not happen with this thing someday, but I'm feeling some of the weight of it all today and I needed to be vulnerable and transparent for a few minutes about it. Mostly just because I like transparency and not because I have some profound point at the end.

I'm not working right now. I haven't had a job - other than once a week child care at a church that's only a couple hours at a time - since I stopped teaching a year and a half ago. That makes it seem (to both me and you) like it should be super duper easy to find time to write a novel. Just make it my full time stay-at-home job and write all day long. Every day. And that's kind of what I have envisioned, and continue to envision even though I've been doing this for a couple months now and that has yet to be reality.

Reality looks more like this.

I woke up this morning and started my day. I only had a couple of things to do and then I could write, so I tried to jump right in and get them done. I fed the dogs, but they were whining at me even though hubs had let them out to pee not a half hour earlier so I took them out again. Captain's leg is broken so I have to be outside with him on the leash every time, and he had to circle the yard to poop twice and pee once this morning, which took a while. I also decided to try to take advantage of the fact that I was already outside to carry some firewood to the deck from the shed, which took a few extra minutes since I was balancing a full armload and Captain on the end of a very stretched leash. We came inside, and I made coffee and breakfast. I just wanted to sit long enough to drink my coffee before attacking the to-do list, but the fire in the fire place wouldn't light no matter how hard I tried and about an hour passed before it finally got going. (Not lighting it wasn't an option because our heater is waiting to be fixed and the house is rather chilly.) By that time my coffee was cold so I reheated it and tried again. But then Captain was whining at me because he's miserable in the house and I was yelling at him to leave me alone and my relaxing cup of coffee wasn't really all that relaxing. So I went into the kitchen and did a bunch of dishes leftover from a spontaneous, late-night baking adventure last night, stopping every six minutes or so to go stoke the fire to keep it alive. Captain still hadn't quite whining at me so I took him out again. I brought more firewood inside, got the fire going really big so I could go take a shower without it dying out, then walked back into the kitchen and saw the stuff on the counter that meant I needed to get the chili for tonight's dinner in the crock pot. So I cut up the tomatoes and the pepper and put in all the ingredients. Then the dishes I'd just used annoyed me sitting in the sink since I'd just done the dishes so I washed them. I got the fire going big again and went to take my shower. Then I cleaned our bathroom and the main bathrooms, while ducking out to the living room a couple times to keep the fire going. By then it was 12:45, and I remembered that I hadn't eaten lunch so I sat down and ate something. I cleaned up lunch, took Captain out again, refilled the fire wood again, and had to spend a few minutes reviving the fire which had mysteriously died. I sat on the couch with my Bible and journal and spent some time in the Word. And now it's 1:55 and I'm spending a few minutes writing this before I finally get to the book.

I'm not meaning to complain about any of this. I think it might be coming across that way, but that's honestly not my intention. My intention is to say that it's never as easy as just sitting in a chair and writing a novel all day long, and not having any distractions. I think if I crated my dog and left to sit in a coffee shop eight hours a day I'd be able to pull that off, but I don't really see how that's necessary. I don't have a traditional job during the day, but I forget sometimes that my house is my full time job. I do still have to do the dishes and clean the bathrooms and make dinner and keep the fire alive and take the dog outside and deal with his cabin fever when we're inside. It's just not as easy as I thought (assumed?) it would be, and I'm learning how to be okay with that. Rather than get frustrated with how my real and actual responsibilities are getting in the way of a hobby I would like to pursue, I'm learning how to roll with it and use the time I have. Because the truth is, I'm really excited about this book. I'm enjoying it a lot. I spend a lot of time thinking and processing and revising what I've already written and figuring out what and how to write what I haven't yet. I'm excited to see what happens, even if it's just that I get to say that I wrote a book and nothing else. Something like that can't be rushed, and it can't be forced, and it certainly isn't worth letting your house go to crap because you spend all your time writing and not maintaining. We still have to eat, the house still needs to be cleaned, the clothes still need to be cleaned, and the dogs still need to pee.

Honestly, this post is more for me than anyone else. It's a rambling mess, I know. And I'm sorry about that. I just needed to sort through some of my reality-versus-expectation frustrations, and to see that it's not Captain's fault this book isn't done yet. Or the bathrooms'. Or the dishes'. It's just reality.

Now that I've said all that...I'm going to write for a while. (After stoking the fire.)