Progress on my book slowed to a crawl this week.
I don’t have an inspiration problem. I have a time problem. I literally can’t find time to put words on the page.
There’s a combination of:
- My daughter taking twice as long to fall asleep at night, which is my prime writing window…
- Launching multiple products and negotiating several partnerships in my marketing business…
- And of course, prepping to visit Japan in May.
And still…despite all the odds…I got another 500-ish words down, moving the plot towards one of the scenes I’m most excited to write in the entire novel.
In a vacuum, 500 words is 10% of what I’ve written in some weeks.
But that’s the wrong way to look at it.
If you usually exercise for an hour every day, but you get really busy one week…
Is it better to just call the week a wash and not exercise at all?
Or should you do 20 pushups every morning and move on with your day?
I’m in “Camp 20 Pushups.”
Make no mistake—there’s no such thing as stasis in life. If you aren’t making progress, you’re making…regress. You’re going backwards.
The only way you maintain your mind is by writing a little bit, even if you don’t want to and even if the little paragraph you eke out this week seems insignificant compared to the 25 chapters you’ve already finished.
As someone who’s written a marketing email every day for the past 15 months (and often more than one per day), there were dozens of days I didn’t feel like showing up. I showed up anyway. And I’m still here.
The 5,000-word weeks will come again, just as spring follows winter and my dog follows raw bits of chicken wings into the trash can.
Until next week…
You are the wind beneath my chicken wings,
Dad
I’m writing a portal fantasy sci-fi horror novel about a mailman delivering a self-addressed birthday card to a missing girl. This newsletter is me documenting the process—the craft problems, the ugly drafts, and the occasional breakthrough. If you want to follow along, subscribe to Daddy Writes A Book.