Can I Write a Book? & Quantum Notes

As I told you in my last post, I made the decision to severely weed my blog subscriptions to a more managed number. I went from 51 blogs using WordPress.Com hitting my email inbox to a mere 16. And with the 16 left, I’ve opted for a weekly digest. I do still have a few subscriptions not associated with WordPress.Com but those writers grace my inbox sporadically.

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Can I Write a Book?

I came across an article that, at first, shook me up a little. Kate McKean wrote about how no everyone is literally not able to write a book. My first impression was the question: Do I have it in me to actually write a book? Or am I deceiving myself?

“I put it like this: I have been running since I was about a year old. Almost 40 years! But I cannot for the life of me run a marathon. I am not physically capable of it, even though I can run a few miles in a row. Writing a book is a marathon. You have to train for it, practice, understand your strengths and weaknesses and work hard to overcome them. You need help, feedback, and support, and you need to try many times before you run your best race. Writing a book that someone else wants to read is running your fastest marathon. No one does it right out of the gate, and few writers can expect to have the stamina without rigorous training.” —Kate McKean

As a literary agent, Ms. McKean says not all writers are capable of writing a full-fledged book. They may be able to write an article, a poem, an essay, a short story, and maybe even a novella. However, the work needed to be done to publish a piece that is at least 50,000 words long and is engaging cannot be done by everyone.

Even though her words hit me with dismay, I stood firm with my persistence and opened up my current WiP and trudged along with it. I know it’s easier for some writers to tackle their projects. I wish, with all my heart, I was one of them. Sadly, I’m not one of them. I struggle, grapple, wrestle and attack my writing with fury. Sure, it’s exhausting sometimes but I feel my days are well-spent

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Quantum Notes

HEALTH
My body is beginning to have a rhythm to it. I’ll have three days of wonderful, sometimes even superb and, then one, may two days of cruddy. It isn’t that I feel ill during that one or two days. It’s just that everything in my day is such a bother and my energy level has slipped down to almost zero. In all honesty, these symptoms don’t last all day. Usually, at about four o’clock I’m feeling okay. It’s irksome, nevertheless.

CHANGE IN PLANS
My husband and I moved here to help his parents out. We would have rather stayed on the Upper Peninsula of Michigan where our idiosyncrasies are welcomed; in fact, seem to be in vogue there. Here in Tennessee, we are, customarily, looked upon as deviants, anomalies. We’re a couple who like having a few friends, not a whole slue of them, but a few to hang out with once in a while. In the ten years we’ve lived here, we’ve only spent time with one couple who are moving to Georgia soon. We do not fit in well here—obviously.

In the past three or four years, we’ve entertained the idea of moving back to Michigan after Hubby’s mom passes away. We aren’t advocating she leave soon, mind you, but when she does go, we thought we’d pull up stakes and head north. We’ve looked at property up there online, daydreaming about where we’d live this time around and about the friends we’d make.

However, earlier this month, I pondered on the speculation of having to find another doctor and dentist that I felt as comfortable with as the ones I have now. I’ve come across some paltry professional in the past. The Upper Peninsula was one of those places where medical and dental care was a little inadequate. Do I really want to go back to that now that I’m a senior?

Hubby and I talked it over. We’ve decided to stay here in the state we dislike and make the best of it. We both think we eventually will find friends who are as odd as we are and we’ll enjoy the milder climate here along with the professionals we trust.

WRITING
I’m still plodding along with my WiP. Some days are chalked full of problems and indecisiveness. The problems don’t bother me all that much. I figure all I have to do is come up with a solution of some sort. It’s the indecisiveness that throws me for a loop. When it comes to the rest of my life, there are few times when I’m undecided on a course of action. True, sometimes that action was wrong but I don’t lollygag, figuring it’s better to do something instead of nothing. However, with writing, I get doubtable so easily.

Earlier last year, I thought Jacqui Murray wrote a post urging her readers to use a flash drive to back up their work from their computers. Although after conversing with her and discovering the post wasn’t hers, I still liked this idea. However, I put off actually doing it, thinking my work was safe enough in a cloud. Maybe it is and, then, maybe it isn’t. Nevertheless, nothing disastrous has happened to my WiP—so far. After my fiasco with my first WiP, you’d think I had learned my lesson in security. Anyway, my husband, always obsessing on being helpful, bought me not one, but three flash drives at Walmart. Now I have five folders of work tucked away in one flash drive.

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Now that the daylight hours will slowly be getting longer and the distractions will be getting less [knock on wood], I’m going to be churning out more words.

What are your plans?

“You don’t actually do a project; you can only do action steps related to it. When enough of the right action steps have been taken, some situation will have been created that matches your initial picture of the outcome closely enough that you can call it “done.”
― David Allen, Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity