Ray Bradbury: "You only fail if you stop writing."

I am not a multi-tasker.  I cannot do one or two or several things at once with any degree of comfort or grace. And that's what I've been doing over the last few weeks. Lots of stuff I had to do and lots of stuff I probably shouldn't have done.

My problem is this: I do not respect the awesome constraints of time, and I never have.  I tend to be tardy (although I have worked on that since tardiness is a sin against the virtue of justice ... it denies the victims of my tardiness something they should have—their time.) I never allot enough time for the things I decide to do. I waste time watching television (go-to rationalization on this one: story research.) And I do not spend enough time taking real care of myself— doing things like sleeping, eating healthy food, and exercising.

I have been a big spender.  A big spender of seconds, minutes, hours and even days.  And because I've come late to the writer's life, I'm having a hard time taking the time to not "stop writing."

Over the last few months, I've realized it's more than just acquiring good, disciplined habits.  At this very moment, I feel pressure to finish this blog post and get going with the "real" stuff I have to do. Shop for birthday presents, pack for a trip, figure out what to make for dinner and bring some stuff to Goodwill.

The way I'm wired to cope with day-to-day life is still very much to "stop writing."

The wiring is changing, little by slowly.  I'm leaving for a vacation on Saturday, and I'm bringing an old lap-top with me that will work just fine as a typewriter.  I have my "WIP on a STICK," Hilary Mantel's Bring Up the Bodies, G.K. Chesterton's St. Francis of Assisi, Jesse Kellerman's Potboiler, Jim Butcher's Ghost Story and Claire Vanderpool's Moon Over Manifest (because reading is the very best motivation to write.) There is not much of anything to "overspend" time on where I'm going.  I will be surrounded by beauty, and beauty is something that almost seems to restore time.

My only sadness is that I won't be able to vote in the fabulous WRiTE CLUB contest while I'm gone, nor will I be able to read the blog posts of Faith Hough, Vijaya Bodach, D.L. Hammon, Lynn Guelzow, Gordon Freeman, Marc Barnes, Heather King or the many, many guest writers on Writer Unboxed.

But I will come back with over ten thousand new words of my WIP and I will not fail.

I only fail if I stop writing.

Where I will be writing for the next two weeks.

It's Sad When You Have to Read Your Blog to Find Out What You've Been Doing

It's Sunday morning before Mass, and I'm blogging.

The writing life has not been part of my existence for the last few weeks.  I've been in graphic design mode.  I designed my darling niece Jane's wedding invites from top to bottom. No longer are brides content with an engraved invitation on white or cream linen stock.  They want color and all paper goods associated with the happy event coordinated.  It all started with the lovely shade of green the bridesmaids will be wearing. My niece sent me an email with a few Pinterest ideas which fleshed out the "vibe" she wanted in the design, along with her preferred fonts.  Before I knew it, I was learning about Pantone hues and belly bands and envelope liners. I was in contact with vendors for envelopes and specialty paper and teeny weeny tissues. I had to relearn calligraphy, but that is like riding a bicycle.  After two sheets of practice addresses, one would never know the last time I wielded a cartridge pen was fifteen years ago and I only ruined six envelopes with blobs and other mistakes.

The design my niece selected is so ... her.  When my sister, her mom, saw it, that's exactly what she said ... "That is so Jane!"  Mission accomplished on my end of things.  The invitations were all mailed from the Bradley Airport Post Office yesterday, so in a couple of weeks I will post the design on my graphic design blog.  I also designed some graduation cards for Greeting Card Universe, some Fourth of July cards and a series featuring the "Keep Calm" meme as it applies to boiled lobsters.

But I haven't been writing much.  I missed the deadline for the WIP It Blog Fest.  I had no new WIP material to present to my writer's group last week, either.  I did write two possible entries for WRiTE CLUB 2013, and spent a couple hours today working on the one I think will appeal to the voters (which is everyone on the Linky List) before I sent it in, but I feel ... rusty.

I thought to myself ... what the heck have I been doing?  Where did I lose so much time?  Then, I looked at my last blog entry and realized, "Oh, I went to Houston and was gone for five days."

How could I forget I did that?  My brother, Sam, is recovering from a burst appendix and my sister and I flew down on US Airways Buddy Passes.  We ended up spending an overnight in Charlotte, NC and got to Houston at 9:30 the next night. We didn't tell him we were coming so as not to disappoint him if we couldn't get there.  He was so glad to see us, and we were so glad to see him.  It was like an earthly foreshadowing of the "Angel of Happy Meetings" Prayer.

Then we spent the next three days cooking, going to doctor's appointments and watching the most appalling stuff on television.  If TV is the harbinger of things to come, the apocalypse cannot be far off. We spent a good deal of time visiting and talking and that felt as if we were doing what we were meant to do.

Fiesta Supermarket, Houston TX ... my new favorite grocery store with the most amazing produce section ... ever!

So, after seeing my blog and realizing that I had traveled, it occurred to me that if I am not writing on a daily basis, other faculties begin to shrivel.  Capacity for memory.  Easy grasp of ideas.  Patience with an unfolding story. Empathetic observation of character.  My life, little by slowly, becomes digital. A blog post here, a YouTube video there.  I don't even do household chores in a cohesive, satisfyingly analog way. I dart about, doing everything marginally.  That's it ... my life is meant to be lived in the body of the story and I'm scrawling out on the margins..

As soon as this post is up, I'm spending the rest of my pre-bed cup of tea visiting with my WIP. One of my goals this summer is to finish the first draft (and, yes ... summer goes all the way through September 20th.) I am going to invest in a notebook, something I can take everywhere along with my pens and paper.

I started this blog post at 9:00 a.m. and it's now 10:48 p.m.  I've come back to it on four separate occasions, and now it's done. A peaceful night to all, and if you're a writer reading this, I wish for you the writer's life in the days to come.  I wish it for me, too.