![]() ![]() The agony of a deadline seems to already be a distant memory. And I’m getting that itch to write it down so I can share it. ![]() I’m already starting to hear new characters whispering in my ear, telling me their story. Enough so that you’ll maybe consider having another baby. Meeting a deadline is a lot like giving birth-shortly after delivery, the pain seems to blur in your memory. If they did, I wouldn’t be doing what I do. But do the bad parts outweigh the good? Never. Like my dad says, if it were easy everybody would be doing it. It’s a good way to analyze everything we do in this life: is what you gain worth what you give up? It made total sense to me-more so than to my husband-and our son didn’t play football that year. He said the bad parts-the agony-outweighed the good parts-the ecstasy. But he really hated the time commitment-seven days a week and school nights where he was up past midnight trying to fit in his homework and study time. He said he loved the camaraderie with his teammates and being out on the field with them, he loved the game of football and he loved Friday nights when he would rush the field with his teammates. When my son was a junior in high school, he informed us that he didn’t want to play football anymore. In what other profession is it possible to touch so many people, and to share what I love the most in the world-stories? that will come from readers letting me know that my words-the same words that I agonized over-have brought them happiness, comfort, assurance, or all three. I will love and treasure each and every email, letter, Facebook posting etc. A book that I believe will give readers a lot of reading pleasure in the years to come. I have created a book that I am very, very proud of. Every morning felt like somebody had stapled my head to the carpet while I was sleeping and I had to rip it from its moorings to start writing again. So was my month-long retreat at the beach fun? No. Whenever I wasn’t dealing with any of the above, I was writing. Plus three family funerals and a dog with a delicate stomach. I’d had three different deadlines earlier in the year in addition to a 7-week book tour, a child graduating from high school and starting college, and another child moving to Scotland for a semester. My lateness wasn’t from procrastinating, I assure you. I was almost at the halfway point when I went on my self-imposed retreat with only a month to go until my due date. I forgot what it felt like to wear shoes or carry on a face-to-face conversation.īut I did manage to write a book. I became paler from lack of sunshine (except when I had to go outside to walk the dog), and my nails will make my manicurist weep when I see her next week. I never walked on the beach because it would have taken too much of my writing time, and I lived on Lean Cuisines, apples, cottage cheese, and ice cream (of course!). ![]() My dog, bless his furry little heart, never once complained that I hadn’t washed my hair for six days or that I was wearing the same sweats that I’d worn the day before and the day before that and may have even slept in. Every morning, noon, and night, I wrote, rewrote, edited, wrote some more, then rewrote again. Before you start thinking romantic notions, allow me to let you in on the reality of a writer’s life on deadline. Repeatedly.įor an entire month, I holed up in a beach house by myself to do nothing but write. The experience of writing on deadline makes me say with confidence that I now know what it feels like to have my eyeballs jabbed with a nail gun. Through all sorts of luck and miracles, I turned it in three days before my deadline. Approximately 140,000 words, and 426 pages. And then I became a writer and those two words, used together, began to make perfect sense. I’d never quite understood how those two words could apply to an artist unless it was referring to the neck pain Michelangelo must have sustained while looking up at the Sistine Chapel for the four years it took to paint it. ![]() It’s the name of a book and movie from the sixties about Michelangelo. Yes, I know you’ve heard that title before. ![]()
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