Thursday, April 29, 2010

Deadline Missed--but thankful for small victories

I hate to say it--and the former reporter inside of me is screaming-- I will not make my deadline. Ick. I could blame it on being sick for a week and pout and whatever, but the bottom line is the book is not going to make it. Needs to be at least 200 pages for the deadline. I'm at 156--still not quite finished.

This may be one of those cases where the glass is literally half empty or half full. So even though I missed the deadline---to have 156 pages in your novel in four months?

I'll take it. I'll take it and run with it. I'm usually pretty hard on myself, and a novel in four months [even a novel that I had been rattling around in my head for a while] was pretty ambitious. It was a big push to get me going and up to speed mission accomplished.

We stumble. We get back up.

I'm also trying to keep reminding myself of WHY I started the year of writing dangerously. It was because I had lost touch with what made writing 'fun.' While I recognize the importance of sending stuff out and of deadlines, I also recognize that writers [or really any artists] must keep track of what makes us joyful...and joy is not the same as happiness....

Plugging forward.
As Oscar Wilde said: "All of us are in the gutter, but some of us are looking up at the stars."

2 comments:

billie said...

Celebrate those 156 pages. Nothing half-empty about them!

Dawn said...

You rock my socks. Yep. I'm not going to let that "inner critic" get to me. I'm like, heck--156 pages!!!!