Day 352: Trust the ...

AAAAAAAH! 

In terms of my 365 day challenge, time is very short. Somehow, after feeling pretty comfortable with where I stood a few weeks ago, I am now 13 hours behind with only 14 days left. So, with exactly two weeks left in my challenge, I will have to do two hours per day for the next two weeks. 

This is not impossible, but it is also not comfortable.

My plan had been to catch up on Veteran’s Day Weekend and Thanksgiving Weekend, but I fell further behind last week after being a poll worker on Election Day (spending 14 hours on my feet was fulfilling but exhausting) and this weekend I got my COVID and flu vaccines simultaneously, which knocked me out for a full 24 hours. I may have also devoted some would-be writing time these past few weeks to catching up on Bachelor in Paradise (hey - I am in a BIP fantasy league, this was an important use of time!) and thus, here I am. 

Thanksgiving weekend, the final weekend of my 365 days, was my back up plan for completing any extra hours I had missed, but after seeing how miserably I failed to bank any extra hours over this past three-day weekend, I am not optimistic about being able to finish extra hours over that four-day one. 

Also, Jesse has told me he will freeze the accounts before letting me donate $3,650 to Donald Trump (I don’t blame him), but basically there is no other option. I need to get these 27 hours done in the next 14 days, come hell or high water. It is non-negotiable. 

Honestly, I have been avoiding my writing in these key few weeks because I feel like I should have some profound insights to share or at least have some more definitive writing progress to report. 

And I do have some progress to report! I have written a manuscript for a children’s book I hope to publish; I have fairly fleshed out ideas for other children’s books; and I have an outline for a “memoir-in-essays”, which will be beautiful, once it’s written.

I have gotten a lot of encouraging feedback about my writing – all of which I keep written down in my journals to help me on days like this when I lose heart. And I feel my voice is an authentic, important part of the conversation, especially about transracial adoption, which is what my best writing this past year has centered on. 

Professionally, I hope to move slowly toward roles that allow me more time to write and less stress overall, so I can focus more time and energy on my writing. 

But I have also had conversations with agents where–alongside compliments of my work, and requests to get in touch when my book is done–were suggestions not to quit my day job. Reality checks that writing, even if and when I get published, even if my work is lovely and important, struggles mathematically to pay the bills.  

So all of this positive feedback, hope and optimism sits next to the recognition that this year of writing dangerously has been just a beginning. That even given the success and relative productivity of this year, I have worlds more to learn and much more work to do than I have done already. 

Even through the grind of the past 352 days, in which I have written maybe 352,000 words, maybe half a million, nuggets, flashes of insight and brilliance exist in much of my writing. I have filled more than 20 notebooks and retired countless pens.

But I think now, as I stand staring down the process of advancing the ball on this writing–not just drafting, or getting the words out on the page, but moving them forward, shaping them into something worth sharing–this reality check is also exceedingly difficult. 

The entire year, I have been fairly successful with writing daily in my notebooks, but much less able to find time and brainspace to take those notes and turn them into something readable. That’s why despite having written for roughly 340 hours, I have only published 40 blog posts.

For me, the revising, editing and publishing process takes significantly more time, and more concentrated time. It proves harder to dip into in just one groggy, early morning hour per day, or fit in around working full-time work, coming home to take care of kids, cook dinner, clean up the kitchen, supervise baths and read bedtime stories.  

I have been most productive this year when I have been able to string together a few days away from full-time work and family obligations, such as my week in Maine and the week when the kids were at sleep-away camp. 

But I also feel frustrated about not being able to devote the kind of time I would like and need to devote to my writing to get the results I want. There’s that emphasis on results, again. In my opinion, I should already be done writing my memoir in essays and I should be shopping four children’s book manuscripts instead of one. 

I am an intensely impatient person and knowing that I will have to continue writing in this seemingly haphazard fashion for at least the next 7 months (through the end of this school year) is hard. 

Plus, advancing the ball on my writing now means involving other people. I will need a team: an agent, editors, publishers, etc., So, I will need to devote time and energy to finding these folks, interacting with them, researching and crafting my pitches, but should that time also count toward my 365 hours and my writing project? Perhaps, because all these activities will help take my writing to the next level, where I am not only writing, but also being read. 

So, I am sort of at a crossroads. What can I do for my next 365 days and 365 hours that will get me closer to where I want to be?

Should I continue my daily hour of writing each morning, which works most effectively when I am just writing ideas or drafting, and hope to fit in the networking, pitching, revising and editing at other times of day (ha!). 

As I enter this new phase of my writing process, I don’t know if the 365 day, 365 hour approach is durable and the right way to handle this new phase. I sort of feel that the past 365 days and 365 hours have all been drafting–and now I need to get to the revising and editing phase of my writing generally. 

I don’t want my amazing ideas, unbelievable stories and flashes of brilliance to be relegated to my notebooks anymore. I want to pick them out, polish them up and send them off to people to have them published and read. 

But that different type of process will perhaps require a different type of time commitment and a different type of time. So, I don't exactly know how to proceed. Should I maintain my one hour per day of writing, because that is the well that I am going back to for all of my future ideas, my connection with the spark that I need to maintain? Because great writers are always in their notebooks collecting ideas, musing, trying things, writing, and that is how they have ideas to feed to articles, books and essays?

Or should I adjust my approach to be more tailored to this phase of the writing process? If so, what does that look like? And how do I balance all of that with my need to work full-time and my desire to be present for my family? 

Although I hoped to present a polished, hopeful, uplifting package to you, my adoring fans, today I am just not feeling so polished, hopeful or uplifted. Maybe tomorrow. 

The most difficult part of this challenge for me has been the process orientation instead of the results orientation. It turns out writing is entirely about process rather than results: the everyday process of meeting with a blank piece of paper or a blank screen and not knowing what will follow. 

I want to have something tangible to show for the work I've done all year. I want to plot the quickest, most direct path from where I am now to where I want to be (a published author). I want to know exactly how to move forward. 

But in this process, none of those answers exist. 

What I mostly have right now is myself, in process, in transition, possibly in transformation. Changing from one thing to another, but not quite anywhere yet.