Alexis Harrington
Working on: Three different projects
Mood: Overwhelmed (still)
Okay, I have a major advantage. Although I do have another job, I can make my own hours because I mostly work from home. As some of you know, it's not at all unusual for me to write until 4:00 AM because that's when it's quiet. I also have the responsibility of 8 animal children (no not the same as human ones--mine are semi self-sufficient but they all nag, nag, nag). No I'm not the weirdo cat lady. I have just two cats, but one big dog, three chickens and two finches. The chickens are wily, surprisingly smart creatures who provide eggs but are rather demanding. If they don't get what they want, they'll make enough noise to rival a car alarm. I figure 8 animal children equal about half a human child.
Then the refrigerator passed away over the weekend, requiring me to shift everything to the beer fridge in the garage, which of course, couldn't hold it all. In the meantime, I was scrambling to put together a requested proposal for an agent and find a replacement for my late refrigerator.
When I lived in an apartment and could have no pets, I admit I was more productive even though I was working at a full-time office job. If something broke, I had only to call the manager's office. The internet was a relatively new wonder to me, not often accessed, and e-mail was pretty much limited to 4-5 messages per day. For you youngsters out there, dial-up was limited to 14.4 and considered to be as fast as lightning. But that was almost 20 years ago and life has changed a lot, mostly for the better. Those were lonely days and I spent all of my spare time either writing, going to chapter meetings, or doing research.
A lot of very successful people have managed writing and full-time jobs. The first one who comes to mind is Martin Clark, one of my favs. He's a young judge in North Carolina who has written three NYT bestsellers. He writes in the morning before going to his office, and he's making pretty impressive money on those books.
Here's what I think this all comes down to: people will find the time to do something they really love. I'm sure we've all heard from/about those who claim they'd like to write but just don't have the time. My question to them has always been, how badly do you want it? If the desire to write is there, you'll make the time somehow. It might not be easy, but you'll do it.
4 comments:
Hi, Lexie!
Congratulations on all your projects. But you're right--even good things can be overwhelming.
And since I have a number of animal children myself, I can vouch for them being very demanding at times. But having had both human kids and animal kids, I'd say that the workload of each animal child pretty much equals the workload of one human child once said human child reaches seven or eight years old. Or maybe you didn't want to envision yourself as having eight kids. LOL! (Or maybe I just spoil my animal kids.)
Good luck on the proposal for the agent. Hope it works out well!
I think you're right, Lexie. If we really want to do something, we find a way. Right now for me, the desire has ebbed a bit, lingering somewhere just under the fear of not getting done some other obligations by the deadline time.
Fingers crossed on the proposal... You're right about the desire. Without that spur, it's hard to make time for anything. All those technological advances haven't given us more free time, just shifted our needs around. Which takes us back to desire. What do we want?
That last paragraph sums it up, I think (I think so much that I used the same concept in mine before reading this). We will write if we truly want to write. If we don't truly want to write, there is always a reason not to.
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