Friday, February 25, 2011

Interruptions

Does this happen to you:

You are working on a story or chapter or an ideal of some kind and life intrudes.  I'm not talking about a quick trip to the market for milk.  I'm talking something big, for example,  he basement floods, the roof leaks because of an ice dam, your spouse is rushed to the hospital.

It seems to me this sort of thing always happens.  The longer a work on my stories more I notice interruptions.  I think this is mainly because I don't want to be interrupted.  

The question is what to do?  Answer: you keep going.  You deal with the emergency and you find time to keep writing.  That's not as easy as it sounds.  I find that sometimes I need to stop writing for a few days so my stress is under control again.  Generally speaking, I can't write well if I'm stressed.

The same goes for revision and editing.  I've adopted a process of editing and revising one chapter a day simply to make sure I don't miss anything and to keep all the parts of my life in balance.

This means editing my novel takes months and not weeks. Sad, but true.  I really need to simplify my life but that's not really possible now.  I'm lucky I can find any time for the little writing I do.

If I didn't know any better I'd say the Universe is trying to tell me something.  Guess, I'm not listening.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to return to revising my novel.


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