The same goes for painting and for writing and for every other human endeavor.
I remind myself of that principle every time I hit a snag in anything. I also tell myself that if something was easy, everybody would be doing it.
I’ve had to remind myself of that a lot with Saving Grace this week. The word count is there, over 3,000 words each for Monday and Tuesday this week, but it has sure been a struggle!
Other than the proven fact (for me) that first drafts are ALWAYS easier than any revision, I’m not sure what the difficulty has been, but each day this week, I’ve done everything I can to avoid writing during the day. Today, I even balanced the checkbook! That’s got to tell you something.
But the days usually end well, with good progress and high word counts, so maybe I’m fretting about nothing. Yesterday, for example, I almost made my 4,000 words a day goal just with Saving Grace.
Today so far: Nothing but a few paragraphs of journal entry and thinking and one so-far puny paragraph of fiction that may or may not end up in the second draft. Don’t you just love second drafts?
Hey, if they were easy, everybody would be doing them, right?
I don’t mean to say by all this bellyaching that nothing is being done. Last night, I re-ordered some of the chapters and it improved the sequencing and story flow quite a bit. I also worked my way past an ominous looking fork in the story road; one of those forks that gets a writer into an entirely new story. Today, all I had to do was clean up the edges around those re-arranged chapters.
And by the end of the writing day, I will have worked my way past chapter twenty in the second draft. Hopefully, I’ll also have worked my way to 4,000 total words for the day.
So there is progress. It’s just not been easy. Praise the LORD for these difficult days and the discipline they inspire.
Sometimes life is easy.