So Much Wasted Time

Remember this post?

It was my hope that I would use my maternity leave to do some significant work while the baby napped. I’ve been a writer for more than 10 years. I write articles to pay the bills and others to educate myself about the world. What I have always wanted was a nice chunk of time to focus on writing a novel. Paying bills has always gotten in the way. And so have distractions of so many other kinds: TV, sudoku, crossword puzzles, and Spider Solitaire have all stolen so much of the free time I claim never to have.

Well, my butt has just been kicked by Melissa Nathan, author of Learning Curve.

Like most writers who haven’t yet been published in book form, I read the author’s notes and acknowledgments looking for some clue to the publishing puzzle. Like most writers, I have also confused the career path of a writer with being a writer. Conventional wisdom says that writers hone their craft by writing and publishing short stories or articles and then, when they are ready to publish a book, they have a reading audience for their work. Except, it doesn’t work that way. By focussing on “how to build a writing career,” it is too easy to forget that in order to publish a book, you have to actually write a book.

And here the sad, sad story from the Melissa Nathan’s notes has hit me. The writer, a woman whose photograph is all bright-eyes and pixie-cut mischief from the inside cover, died of breast cancer two months after finishing her fifth novel. She was 37 years-old and her acknowledgements include loving, loving comments to her husband and three year-old son.

Life is so full of love and can be so short and here I’ve been, wasting so much time on the wrong things and robbing my children of time while not giving them a real example of what it means to develop and live up to my real potential. I have always paid lip service to the idea that we serve our children by showing them how to achieve their dreams. I think it’s time for me to actually do it.