The Pressure Cooker Grows Hot

It was a week ago I started to visualize how I would feel to be a working writer - writing new work in the morning. Rereading older work later in the day. Researching new markets and making phone calls to industry folks to check on the status of manuscript x. The idea wasn't meant to be daydreaming by a pond, wishing on for the whims of fairies, but rather active visualization in the way a runner would visualize the course in front of him or her. The goal was to perceive the distance needed to cross the gap in front of me.

Of course, the universe responded in brute force. My work schedule exploded. I started receiving regular support calls at 2 in the morning. My daughter got a nasty cold and my wife has been scrambling to finish a hearth before the new woodburning stove is installed. While she has been building the structure, I've been taking care of our daughter almost fulltime since I'm really more of a liability when it comes to home projects.

It seems like every time I try to commit, a hurricane gale blows my resolve to tatters and by the time the storm has calmed, the idea of living as a working writer feels like a dream reminisced at lunch time.

So I'm doing the only thing I can do right now is write in the open spaces that I find and yes, I am writing. But the writing is hard. I'm lucky if I get one page done. Yet there is joy in this storm. I crossed the fifty page mark of my current revision last night. My book is twenty five percent done and while I realize another rewrite will probably follow this one at least the hard work is getting done. So there is a light in the darkness to keep me moving one step in front of the other. No one told me it was going to be easy, but then again, no one told me it would be like this. Oh well, back to the draft.