January 20, 2009
One of the most important things writing teaches you is acceptance. Sometimes, you don’t make the big sale you want, the sure thing you thought was in the bag, and you have to accept that. Sometimes, you find the perfect editor or agent after extensive research, write and send the perfect query letter, and they don’t even respond. And sometimes, you can’t make your daily word quota no matter how hard you try…not because of lack of ability, but because life throws surprises in your way.
My mentor, Dean Wesley Smith, calls things like that “life rolls,” and you can’t avoid them. I had one tonight, for example. All day, I looked forward to working on my fiction; I really built up a good charge and head of steam. Yesterday, in fact, I wrote over 1600 words, and I wanted to keep up that head of steam. But instead of hitting my Daily Grand, I didn’t even crack 500 words, thanks to a “life roll.”
This afternoon, my niece called to ask if she could drop by the house this evening and work on her resume. (She doesn’t own a computer.) She showed up around 6:30PM, and we went to work. About an hour later, she started complaining of severe stomach pains, and they just got worse. She ended up laid out on our sofa, writhing in pain…and we were worried because she’d just had carbon monoxide poisoning the day before. The pain got worse, but she refused to go to the emergency room. My wife and I went back and forth with her, trying to get her to go to the hospital, but she wouldn’t do it. Then, we called her mother, my wife’s sister, and the discussion got more and more complicated. In the end, we drove the niece to her house, where her mother met her; one of us drove the niece’s car down so we could leave it there for her, and my wife drove our car. By then, it was 9:00. On the way home, my wife discovered she’d let the gas tank run down to nothing; the low fuel light was on…so we had to stop and pump gas. By the time we got home, it was after 9:30.
By then, there was no chance of hitting my daily quota. But I had to accept it. Nothing I could do to change it, and complaining would only make me look like a heel. I just had to keep reminding myself what my mentor says about those damn life rolls, that you can’t avoid them. You just have to get through them and start over the next day. Sit down in front of the computer and start writing. Not worry about missing your quota for one day. And rest assured that one truth remains unchanging: life rolls will come your way again, there’s no way to avoid them, so deal with it.
I WILL make my Daily Grand tomorrow. I have faith. See you then!
