Friday Musings

Today is Friday, which means it's a blog day.  But it's also a book editing day and a turn-in-an-article day and a play date day and a run errands day and a laundry day.  Sometimes writing can feel like the rifle shooting portion of an Olympic biathlon.  You hurry, hurry, hurry through the other activities of the day and then somehow need to slow your heart rate down, calm your thinking, and focus on the blank page in front of you.  And you hope what comes out on that page is lyrical and enchanting or heart-pounding and gripping or suspenseful and intriguing.

Just like the participants in the biathlon, it takes practice, with some days producing better results than others.  Some excel at rifle shooting but never in a context of doing it between skiing legs.  And I suppose many writers shut themselves off from the rest of life in order to write.  In fact, that is the recommended path to take.

Sometimes I'm able to write like that, most often when the kids are in school.  But today isn't one of those days.  My youngest sits a few feet from me playing an elaborate made up war game using the game pieces from Axis and Allies.  He carries on his own little conversations, complete with any number of sound effects.

Another child is in the kitchen washing up his dishes after a late breakfast.  My husband is gathering his things to run errands.  And while I am aware of these goings on around me, my mind is also on this blog and on my book, playing out the various scenarios of the elements I will be adding to it today.

I once read a different writer's blog who criticized authors who didn't write enough, using their life as an excuse.  It made me stop and think.  Am I letting the living of my life get in the way of my writing?  There are days when that is undoubtedly true.  But I actually plan for that.  I schedule days for working on other things with no intention of writing.  That way I seem to pack a lot into the day, but I also carry no guilt about not adding to the word count of my book.

Still, there are far too many days like today, when I am writing and living life at the same time.  I guess it's just the path I've chosen, and somehow it's working out.  It presents the challenge of time to devote to my writing, but I think it makes my writing better and more authentic.  Without it I probably wouldn't even be able to write.