Life's Disruptions

It’s been ten weeks since my knee replacement surgery, and it’s been a fight to feel normal. Fortunately, I didn’t look as beat up as this cat… After weeks of physical therapy, I’m finally up to writing and doing writing related business on a regular basis.
 
Okay, maybe you haven’t had surgery, but summer itself can be a disruption.  Vacations, kids home from school, hot weather—although this year we put in whole house air conditioning and it is such a relief—all those can distract.
 
I also see writers being disrupted by fear of what’s going on in our country. Others experience some kind of crisis—family, financial, job related—that makes writing the last thing on their minds.
 
Once things calm down, how do we get back into writing?
 
I usually ease back in. Recently, I’ve been able to catch up on reading writing related newsletters, listening to writing related podcasts, and doing research.  My email inbox isn’t so frightening anymore and I can engage with others about writing again. Good things that motivate me to get back into writing blog posts and, yes, to working on that novel.
 
There are times when a story itself has pushed me back into writing. I love this quote from author Sarah Noffke, “A day will come when the story inside you will want to breathe on its own. That's when you'll start writing.” I’m not there right now though.

I've used submission deadlines and critique group meetings as motivation. “Must get something written/revised and ready to go!”
 
But, sometimes we just need to sit down and write. Read what Harriet Beecher Stowe said in a letter to her sister-in-law, “Since I began this note I have been called off at least a dozen times—once  for the fish-man, to buy a codfish—once to see a man who had brought me some baskets of apples—once to see a book man ... then to nurse the baby—then into the kitchen to make a chowder for dinner and now I am at it again for nothing but deadly determination enables me to ever write —it is rowing against wind and tide.”

Deadly determination, yes. That’s what it comes down to in any case.

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