You know what? I'm terrible about updating my site. Whew! A touch of honesty always takes the weight off my shoulders and that felt GOOD. The lack of blog maintenance is just a fact of my life right now. I'm a stay-at-home father for two boys, aged two and four, which includes all the house cleaning, meal preparing, fun making, and all-around daily mess of an emotional tornado that makes up the all-encompassing homemaker position.
That brings me to my point, an aspect of writing (especially those writers that have some type of full-time position balanced with the DREAM, including homemakers) that is often overlooked: progress is typically small. I often forget the smallness of progress. I get down on myself when I don't produce enough words or I stall in the process of writing a book or I forget to post on my blog. That last one is ALL THE TIME. My story is this: ever since I was young, I've loved to read and write. My English and Literature classes throughout my school years were always a breeze, but I was never the type of wunderkind that wrote a full length book at twelve. Writing was always "easy-ish," in the sense that I could produce an essay or story thirty minutes prior to its due date and pass at a breeze, BUT I never disciplined myself enough to patiently work through my writing to create something truly special. (Part of my lack of discipline was the belief in the MYTH of a writer pumping out a book in one go--instead of the constancy and hard work of the RE-WRITE or the MYTH of only writing with inspiration rather than stapling your butt to the chair and WRITING.) I didn't find my discipline until my late twenties. By that point, I was married with a full-time job and only the far off dreams of becoming an author. It seemed too distant, too impossible, but finally--with a lot of encouraging from my wife--I wrote a book between commutes to work, lunch breaks and late nights at home. Nothing really came of that first book, but it opened the floodgates. I wrote more and more. I started some things, finished others, and eventually started querying another book. Two years ago, my wife and I effectively switched positions. She was due back for work after close to a year off and she was ready, but we didn't want to do the daycare thing. So I left my job to focus on the boys and--in my scant free time--work on my writing. NOW, today, someone looking from the outset--with zero knowledge or appreciation of publishing--nothing much has changed since that monumental shift in our home lives. I'm still the homemaker. Still watch my boys on the daily. I still produce most of the meals, housecleaning and clothes washing. As to the writing, I'm still without a published book or a contract. With most people, especially those I don't know well, I keep the writing aspect of my life very private. Although I do my best to keep it like a "real job" wherein I hold myself accountable to a writing routine and daily goals, to most people, if something doesn't provide an income, it ain't a job--no matter how seriously you take it. The thing is though, I've accomplished a TON, especially in the face of the snail-pace of publishing. I have an agent (this is agent #2, after my first shmagent experience, which you can read here: https://jamesfryarwrites.weebly.com/home/on-agentsschmagents), I have a book on submission, I've written a lot of new pages and completed two new books and working on another. Yet without that book on a store shelf, it FEELS like I haven't done enough. And that's when I have kick and remind myself what I have done. Every word, each page and all your work adds up. Even tiny, incremental steps are closer to your goal than doing NOTHING. Just owning up to your goals or dreams, acknowledging them and proceeding forward, are all steps in the right direction. That is PROGRESS. It's all hard work and it's never too small. I'm very lucky to have a wife who works in the airline industry. We get to travel more than most. It's funny, when you're way up high, sailing over cotton ball clouds, and you peek out that little window, it seems as if you're traveling incredibly slow. Clouds don't change much. If terrain is visible, it doesn't zip by. BUT you are traveling INCREDIBLY FAST. It just doesn't seem like it. Your perspective tells you that you're going very slowly even though an average commercial airplane travels at speeds over 400 miles per hour. That's how I think writing works. Most of the time, it feels as though I'm going at a snail's pace, but if you keep at it and continue chugging along, you'll be arriving at your destination before you even realize it.
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