Well, last night 3B (Beautiful Baby Boy) slept 10:30-5:30, marking his (and my) first 7-hour stretch of sleep since he was born 7 months ago. 🥳 We are celebrating as a family by having builders in:
Current animal count: 4 cats, 16 hens, 1 cockerel, 0 Shetland ponies.
Kid status: #3, 4 and 5 asleep, and #1-2 finally going quiet (light bulbs confiscated, a weeping #2 hugged back into settling, and #1 steered away from bathroom, diverted from messing with her new pet frogspawn, then trying to read by the dim light of her microscope…)
In theory I could write. In practice my brain seems too tired to create much in the evenings, and over the last month or so I’ve spent most of my “writing-vibe” time scrolling or opining on the new writerly online communities I’ve joined than actually working on my own writing.
Objectively, I must surely have been more tired when 3B was smaller, and yet I wrote more. So what is this creative hiatus really about? Editing/revising is hard…but I’ve done the majority of it now (she says naively). I need to rewrite the ending to make sense of new threads and generally make it sing, but it’s less than the rewriting I’ve already done, and I did that well. What gives?
Fear of failure? Ever since Potentially Interest Agent gave me the shining revise and resubmit offer (as in, she offered to read it again after her revisions, nothing more concrete), she catapulted me from zero-status wannabe to Someone Who Caught an Agent’s Eye. And now there’s something to lose. Once I’ve truly done the best I can and returned it to her, it may not work out. The more time passes, the more likely it won’t – she’s since signed 2 more authors so far🫣 And if it doesn’t, I’ll find myself demoted, no longer in the shiny land of working on my book at the encouragement of a real-life ✨Agent✨, just once again someone who did her best and hasn’t got anywhere with it yet.
Is that why I’m stalling? Or is it the run of teething 3B, or the fact we’ve had builders everywhere for nearly a month now, or that me and Hubby have been more strained of late?
They’re all valid possible causes. But, in a way, the reason is moot. There’s never another time to write than now. Either you do, or you don’t. Plenty, of course, comes first (hello, kids👋) and rightly so. Maybe even more should come first (hello, Hubby…Hubby? Hello?). Regardless, there will be little moments in the day, those pauses in the bathroom when no one knows you’re already done, or when the fifth kid has finally settled, or when they’re all happily occupied and there’s no looming meal to prepare for, when I will have chances to write.
A lovely new writer friend (hello, Internet👋) called these moments of micro writing “like stolen kisses with a lover”. I can still do that, no matter what else is or isn’t going on in the Chaos known as Life. And just like with a lover, those snatches of contact with my writing and my fictional world will tint the time around them, keeping my subconscious working on my characters and story so that when I finally DO get a bigger chunk of time to write, they’ll be there to meet me, ready to dance.
So I do my story a disservice when I scroll through the fun new writing communities’ endless chatter, and harvest nuggets of satisfaction by scattering my opinions among the comments of strangers. Those moments need to be kept precious, jealously guarded so my book and I keep the passion alive. Even if all I do is open my Word app and stare at the opening lines of half a new scene I’ll never use, before one of the kids pulls me back into Real Life. That stolen moment with my book is the kiss that keeps it alive. So here’s to being a faithful lover.
Country Mum Writes 