Saturday, December 03, 2005

Suddenly it all seems worthwhile...

Today was a bust writing wise. A lot of household chores got in the way – and while I cleaned out that pesky linen closet, finished the laundry [miracles do happen] and crafted an award winning grocery list – I got no writing done.

I thought about writing a lot. I thought about all the stories I’d like to be working on and none of the stories I AM working on. I made book marks, I made dinner, I made lunch, I made the bed. Other than that I made no headway in my chosen profession.

What’s my motto? Make progress every day? How about every other day?

A little while ago I climbed up the stairs from the basement where I’ve got a chair situated between two work tables so I have access to book marks and Christmas present wrapping at the same time, and I plunked down to check my e-mail and what did I find?

A wonderful note from a reader in who just finished one of my books and thoroughly enjoyed it. She liked it enough to sit right down and tell me about it.

Aside from the obvious ego boost, it’s stuff like this that smoothes over the rough days. Back when I was writing fan fiction I got e-mail from people who enjoyed my work and I loved that – but those stories were free. The people who read them had tons of material to choose from and the only limitation was the time it took to actually read everything they wanted to read. Now readers actually have to pay for my work…so the compliment is doubled. Here’s someone who plunked down money to get my story, and not only felt it was worth the time it took to read it, but that it was worth having to pay for it, and good enough to take the time to comment to me personally about it.

That makes all the head banging worthwhile. Too bad I can't get this feeling when it comes to food shopping and vacuuming the living room.

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