Reality check

I am finding myself getting a little annoyed with the book I have been reading about writing. Don't get me wrong, it has been so beneficial and has had some truly useful tools that I can use going forward with my writing. But, well, me being me, I am finding myself a little miffed when the author continues to reference the multitude of projects and ideas you should (or could) have going on at one time. These many ideas are the ones that are all neatly organized in a wonderful expanding folder. There also seems to be some annoyance generated when the author talks about goals and timelines that you should map out for the year! The year?!? Really! I am already panicked about my post for tomorrow. How could I handle figuring out the entire year? Give me a break!

The author talks about having these multiple projects going on at once. It seems obvious that you should have several completed novels circulating as this will increase your chances of being published. This author states that the time in-between (get this) your completed publishing deadline and your next submission should be spent to research the various ideas that are neatly filed in your expandable folder. Then at the beginning of this new week, you can begin the actual writing process and not have to interrupt yourself to look things up. Whoa! Hang on one minute here! Ummm, not to be rude but...Time?!? And how many things are complete and how many are in that folder?! I’m losing count here. But wait; excuse me...full time job...life. I can start writing at the beginning of the new week? I have all day, all week to write? Since when?

If anything this book has made me realize that there needs to be an understanding of reality here. Gee. There is probably nothing I would rather be spending all my time on than writing. I would be in some kind of paradise if I had time to be working on multiple projects and multiple story ideas. It would be heavenly if the only time management I needed to worry about was researching in-between my publishing deadlines! Wouldn't that mean that something I wrote was completed and accepted by, by, dare I say, a publisher? And I did this – when? In my sleep? It must have been, because I know I’ve been spending some capacity time writing the bits I have down now. I need to show up to my full time paying job all week and I don’t have the luxury of having nothing else to do but write and organize and research. What a wonderful land that must be. I didn’t see a disclosure before I bought this book that it should only be purchased by writers that have all the time in the world.

Reality is such a hard thing to deal with. The author of this book I am reading should be taken aside. There are some realities that should be explained to her.

Somehow, I don’t think I’m the right person for that job.

TT