Pink Think: “When it’s dark, you can see the stars.” – African proverb
I was sitting at the kitchen counter Saturday night with my NEO word processor in front of me. My 12 and 8 year old daughters were painting a model horse and drawing a picture respectively. So we were all pursuing our “hobbies” after a girls’ night out. My husband came home with our 11 year old son from a dinner.
We all chitchat, telling each other how our nights out went, when my husband asks me, “And how is my workaholic wife?”
He didn’t sound snooty, but his words upset me. I was halfway through my word count goal (I have a goal of writing 50k words this month) and struggling. It was hard concentrating on my story with my family, but I thought I could just sneak in a few more words before bedtime and still be a part of the group.
Feeling guilty, I got up and put away my NEO and instead sat on the couch to read a book (reading books to research my novel around my family doesn’t make me feel as guilty) but couldn’t concentrate. My daughters were both doing something that gave them pleasure, just as my writing fiction was giving me a lot of pleasure. Why was I a “workaholic”, while my daughters’ passions were okay?
Once the tears began to fall, I couldn’t stop them.
I cried because I want so badly to succeed as a novelist, but I am not very good at disciplining myself enough to finish my goal for the day without cutting into family time.
I cried because I have been without much sleep since the start of the month to achieve a daily word count goal of 2000 words and I am just plain exhausted.
I cried because I really, really want to finish this novel, but I was ready to give up.
***
We tucked our kids in bed and took our dogs for their nightly walk. I hid my face behind my coat hood and walked in silence beside my husband.
He said, trying to make amends, “I just want you to know that I’m silent not because I hold a grudge but because I just don’t want to say anything that might upset you more.”
“I know,” I said. We walked the rest of the neighborhood in silence. It was crisp cold, the kind that hurt your lungs. I looked up and saw stars, vivid against their dark backdrop.
When we returned to the house, my husband kissed me goodnight, and I sat for a few minutes wondering what to do. I was drained, emotionally and physically; it was midnight. I could go to bed…or I could finish my goal for the day.
For the next two hours, I wrote like a possessed woman, reviving my novel’s plodding plot. I wrote about my main protagonist losing her friend to an illness, her dashed hopes and her grief. I wrote about pain and sadness. I reached deep in places I wasn’t aware of. And when I reached 2,325 on my word counter, I stopped and finally called it a night.
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