Seasons of Waiting or Excuses?
In January, I was all set to dive into my WIP. I had just put my daughter in school full time, and I had my days mapped out by the hour. Then “I got the call.” The novella I submitted to Barbour for an anthology the week before was sold! After the shock registered, I realized I had to abandon my current WIP in order to cut my 56,000 word story down to 20,000. Talk about a daunting task!
But I dove in, obsessively cutting and laboring for weeks. Thanks to Snowmaggedon 2011, I managed to cut my story down to 35,000. I sent it off to my critique partners with the hope that they’d see a couple of threads and scenes I could cut. While I waited, I got busy helping my 3-5th grade students write their stories. I told myself I couldn’t work on my WIP while I was editing my novella or helping my students, and that was partly true. It’s hard enough to keep one story straight in my brain. Still, if I was really honest with myself, not working on my WIP wasn’t about not having the time, it was about not thinking I was good enough to write this story. Though it’s true sometimes the hardest part of this writing journey is the waiting, I wonder if sometimes we sabotage our writing time waiting for that season of life that allows us to write? What I learned this summer is that there’ll never be a good time to write, and not having the time to write is just an excuse to not write. Another thing I’ve learned is that even writing bad is better than not writing at all.
This writing journey can be very lonely and scary at times, but should that stop us from doing what we know we should be doing? What we’re called to do? What do you think?
