Day 6: Hey, What Happened to YOU?

Those of you who have actually read this now (yeah, both of you) will realized that I was going along great guns for days and days, and then stopped. What happened? Did I give up writing? Am I dead?

What happened to me happens to all of us sooner or later, and it's what separates the writers from the wannabes. What happened is that my life blew up.

On Monday the first, I sat down and wrote about 2100 words. It was easy. It was fun. I was enthusiastic as all get-out. I planned to go to the write-in on Tuesday and write even more and hold myself up as a shining beacon of authorhood. Then, just before I was set to leave for work, one of the people who works for me announced she is quitting.

My world was suddenly in a tailspin. This is a person who does an amazing amount of work in our little group and her leaving is a tragedy on a grand scale. This is worthy of panic! However, I went to the write in. I was even productive, writing nearly 3,000 words.

Wednesday, I went to work and attempted to deal with the aftermath of her leaving, but I felt awful. By Wednesday night, I was fully in the grips of a stress-induced attack of the shingles, which for me is pretty debilitating (they're on my face and cause blinding headaches and the kind of pain that is normally cured by swallowing a bullet fired directly into the mouth). But I wrote anyway. Thursday I tried going into work and ended up coming home early, I felt so horrible. I couldn't do a blog entry, but I wrote anyway. Friday I never got out of bed until afternoon. But I wrote anyway.

Here's the thing: as long as I can figure out, in my blindness, in my searing pain, how to turn on the computer, I can write. It takes almost no energy to touch the keys and make them produce letters, and even if I nap between each word, I can write.

I still have to clean my house and take care of my family and figure all this work crap out, etc. But I'm not going to fall down on my words. That's too important. If you're a writer, that's what you do. Regardless of what else happens, you make the time to do the writing. Otherwise you're just another one of those whining wannabes who sits down, writes a sentence or two, and then succumbs to an attack of the vapors and just can't go on.

Writers, we're better than that. We're stronger than that. We know that the only thing that makes us writers is that we write.