When a Writer Goes on Respite

Last month, I cleared my plate of a blogging obligations in order to finish this current round of novel rewrites. In those thirty days, I found plenty of time to write.

I spent much of that time reflecting. Some of it lost in aimless TV. A large portion of it devoted to watching Colin Firth in Pride & Prejudice. A little blown on complaining musing about the realities of life. You can see where I’m going with this, right?

I didn’t finish the draft.

I did learn an important lesson, though. Contrary to what I believed, Time is not my problem (though it is certainly a good scapegoat).

For me, Time is like money: the more I earn the more I spend, and not always on the things for which it was intended.

I don’t regret taking a break from blogging. When I wasn’t lost in Jane Austen or Jane Austen-like movies, I made Thanksgiving dinner with the hubby. Fired up the record player with my mom’s favorite Elvis Christmas album. Put up Holiday decor with the kids. Prepared for and celebrated the birthday of “Nanci” (a doll, mind you, but a very special member of the family…imagination runs rampant in our house, and only a little of that is mine).

Is there any wonder why a writer with a life might take years (and sometimes a full decade) to finish a novel?

I could pout about getting little done on the draft. Well…actually, I did pout. In my journal, in a late-night email to a friend, in a out-of-the-blue argument with my spouse who wisely did not take it on and sent me packing with my laptop to the nearest coffee shop. Pity-Party U.S.A. But then I read this on Amy Shearn’s Twitter feed, a quote from Sarah Ruhl’s 100 Essays I Don’t Have Time to Write:

[T]empting as it may be for a writer who is also a parent, one must not think of life as an intrusion. At the end of the day, writing has very little to do with the writing, and much to do with life. And life, by definition, is not an intrusion.

Lesson learned. Everything I did over the past several weeks–from the tiny rewrites all the way to the photos I took of Nanci in her birthday dress and Nanci “blowing out the candle”–carries weight and importance in my journey as a writer. I mean, you cannot bypass the making of chocolate pie or the building of Christmas Town just so you can finish rewriting chapter 8.

The key for me is not in finding balance between life and writing but in becoming willing to participate in both without seeing one as the enemy of the other.

How did your November shape up?