Hey kids! I took a weekend off and feel totally recharged! Amazing how you don’t realize you are working ALL THE TIME until you stop. It can be difficult to throttle down from that high-revving lifestyle.
One of the things I did was listen to some of my favorite music. And one of my favorite albums (yeah, I’m old) is Paul Thorn’s Mission Temple Fireworks Stand. He has so many great lyrics. His gravelly voice and rootsy-swampy Louisiana rhythms are just what I needed to get my mind out of my head. If you know what I mean.
But what shocked me was how much of his advice pertained to the craft of writing.
“You can hit the ground running like a shot from a gun. But going the distance is the hard part son…” from Everybody Looks Good at the Starting Line.
“When life hits you like a truck, you gotta rise up…” from Rise Up.
There were many more examples, but I won’t bore you. It felt good to sing these songs at the top of my lungs in the car going to a remote mountain cabin with no electricity or internet. It really shook out the cobwebs. And after I had started to relax I began musing about how difficult it is to write novels. Why do so many people insist on doing it when there are easier ways to make money? I think one of the reasons may be that we’re most proud of succeeding at things that are the most challenging, the most difficult, the ones that stretch us as human beings. And pulling stories and characters out of our heads and organizing them into compelling memorable dramas is very challenging. The first draft might flow right onto the computer screen. But those rewrites will definitely hit you like a truck.
I had a great weekend. It revitalized me for the long marathon of work that is always ahead of me like the highway viewed through my windshield. But like most of the professionals I know in the publishing industry, I am in it for the long haul. I will go the distance, son. And when I get bad sales number news for a client or editorial rejections on a manuscript I love, I will pick myself up, shake off the disappointment, and sing it once more with gusto!
*cue Mission Temple Fireworks Stand in my brain*
