A few days ago, after I had typed up all the handwritten pages, I put my notebook in a drawer. I had 164 pages; I could take a break. I was going to be super-busy with school for the next little while. It wasn’t like I came into these new courses with a fresh slate. There were loads of essays and piles of homework to check. The first day I got the material, I worked for 14 hours planning, reading, and grading. The next day I taught for 9 hours straight.
I hear stories of being too busy to write all the time. Everybody’s busy. How can we make time to write? Why should we? Especially if our stories aren’t selling, we don’t have a book contract, and we are starting to suspect our WIP sucks.
This was the state of affairs at my house, in my head, last night. But something knocked on the door of my consciousness while I was dreaming. It’s even more important to push ahead with my story now. Despite the “this book sucks” blues.
It is probably dangerous to keep the notebook in the drawer when I feel this way. I might talk myself into giving up entirely, which would be a shame as I am so far into the story. And it’s basically a sound story. Whatever sucks, I can fix when I revise.
So this morning I got up early, took my notebook out of the drawer, and wrote a scene. It didn’t suck.
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