Old Writing, New Writing

I wish I had more time for writing.  I have about a dozen drafts sitting on my blog on a variety of topics, but they all take more thought and care then I have time to give them lately to get them done and out into the world.  I hope I get to them.

I'd also like to get back to editing my second novel.  I'm trying to update it and put it into a presentable form so that I can hand it to an editor at some point and get some much needed help.  I'm excited about getting it finished.  It's not a tearjerker like the first book, so it may be easier to promote.

Speaking of promotion, if you haven't yet gotten a copy of my novel, Almost There in all it's forms can be found here.  Anyone who has read it and liked it and hasn't put a review up on Amazon yet, please take a moment to do that and I will be soooooooo grateful.

I'm in an odd place with my writing at a moment where I am too swamped with work and kids and life to commit to anything new.  Everything I have to offer is from the past.  My piece for This I Believe was recently featured as an essay of the week and I've gotten feedback from people all over the country who heard Amazing Grace on the radio and were touched by it.  I recently went to Michigan to speak at my mom's book club who were all were nice enough to read my novel.  But all of that is writing that comes from a time before I even had my third kid.

I'm lucky enough to have offers to write for online publications and for radio (some of it pays, some of it does not), but I don't have time, and it's frustrating.  I don't lack for ideas or passion, just time.


I am completely flummoxed by people who are bored.  Life is so short!  There is so much to see and hear and do and read and create and try before we die!  I have about a half a dozen novels I want to write knocking around inside my head, but I have to get the first few I penned finished and out there before I get to them.

So much time is sucked up by the needs of daily life that I'm lucky if on any given day I get to do the things I really want to do.  Why are building violins and writing the two things I realize I never got to at the end of most days?  How does that happen over and over and over?  My days are filled with hugs and music and petting my silly dog so I'm not saying my life is bad.  I just don't understand how the few things that matter most to my identity as an individual are always the first to get pushed aside in favor of so much else, most of which is forgettable.

It's another version of the Journal Paradox, I suppose.  I think we have an idea of what life should be, and don't realize all the stuff that gets in the way is actually the main event.

Today is another Mold-A-Rama hunt.  It will be great.  It's not building instruments or writing a book, but I think my real problem is that those things are things I need to do alone.  And my time with the people I care about is finite.  My children are growing so fast, and to choose to do something without them when I could be enjoying them while they are still living under my roof is hard.  This explains why the last few instruments I built were done in the dead of night while everyone slept.  And why serious large writing projects have been on hold for years.

So there is no good solution.  Just hope that I will find time to build and write again.  Just apparently not today.