time enough

Writing is an activity that I’ve enjoyed throughout my life.  Making up short stories, recording my speculations, thinking out loud on paper, even writing full length novels.  I’ve engaged in all of these over the years.

I’ve put together three novel length works over the years and they all lie in various states of editing.  That is to say they all need to be finished.  Unfortunately this requires no just the time to finish but the services of a professional editor and again more time to meet with the editor and go back and forth in an interactive process.  Not something that I can afford to engage in time wise.

I’ve joined various writing groups in town and I find it both exciting and depressing when I hear that a fellow writer is moving forward with getting a novel published.  Exciting because I feel that I am in contact and interacting with the professional writing community in my city.  Depressing because it reminds me that I need to get going on my work.

This year has been packed with responsibilities, with work, with a thousand mini-emergencies that require my attention.  Little things really.  But they need to be tended and unfortunately they tend to sap away the precious time needed to “write”.

Then of course you have to be in the mood to write.  I know this sounds ridiculous but you have to be in the right mindset in order to write.  Or at least I have to.  I don’t just turn it on and off like a faucet.  I can sit at a table with my laptop for hours looking at the screen and get nothing done.  Other times ideas are gushing out of me a mile a minute.

So I’m kind of stuck.  I want to get something done this year with at least one novel.  But finding the time has been difficult.  I barely have the time to keep this blog going.

I also have to admit that I am a bit hesitant to let a stranger, and a professional critic at that, tear into my work.  I just have to hope that I can find the time and psych myself up to get this done.  I am sure that once I get through the first editing session that I will be able to get the process rolling.