This weekend, we brought home a new addition to our family. Meet Cooper, our adorable little Labrador puppy. He’s fun, my three year old son is in seventh heaven and my hubby is pretty darn pleased, too. It’s definitely time for us to add a dog back into the family, after we lost both of our beloved pets, Tucker and Xena, in the last year and a half.
On twitter last week, agent Rachelle Gardner made a comment about how the rest of the world just faded away when you have a sick child. That is more true than anything — when my son is sick, nothing else matters more than making sure I take care of him. And the same is true of my husband. And now, we have a new puppy who will need some TLC while he gets used to his new family.
I’ve read so many times that if you want to write badly enough, you have to write No Matter What… or “protect the time” or “if you aren’t putting it first, you don’t want it badly enough.”
While I understand the place for these sentiments, I also somewhat disagree at times. Is my writing important to me? Absolutely. That’s not in question at all. But the most important thing in my life is my family: my husband and my son and our well being as a family. And I will never consider that “life has gotten in the way” when it comes to putting my family above anything and everything.
So what do these statements really mean? Life gets in the way of doing what you want to do, meaning writing? If you aren’t putting your writing first, you don’t want it more than anything else in the world? Perhaps for some people that’s true and their writing is the most important thing in their lives. I get that. For me? It will never top my family. And that’s okay.
“No matter what” is a pretty broad statement… and there are a lot of ways to finish that statement I wouldn’t be okay with. So it’s a fine line of understanding when to protect your writing time versus when to put something or someone else first. And it’s just as fine a line to not make putting something else first an excuse to hide from your writing.
This weekend, my writing took a back seat to my life and I’m more than okay with it. (In fact everything did but my family…including getting this blog post up last night.) It was a big opportunity for our family to have bonding time with the new puppy and with each other… his first days here won’t ever come again. It was important, and today, we all went off to our respective places a little happier and lighter for it. It was worth it.
What about you? How do you judge that line? Is there a time when you know you are putting something above your writing that doesn’t need to be? Or what about the times when your writing takes a backseat to what’s going on in your life and that’s okay?
3 comments
Jeannie, love the picture of Cooper!! Best of luck with this new baby addition to your life. *grin*
I completely understand what you mean. I had life get in the way of my writing the past 3 days. Friday I cleaned house and cooked in preparation for my daughter’s birthday party, Sat. I did more of the same and enjoyed the party in the afternoon, then we sat as a family and watched a movie with the younger kids while my 16yr old attended his first dance. My hubby and I waited up for him to get home to find out how it went (good) and then the next day I drove an hour away to meet my two sisters, mom, aunt and two cousins in a central location of WI for a girls lunch. Came home to find my brother and sister in law arrived at 4pm for my daughter’s birthday party, just one day late, and we sat up visiting with them until 10pm.
Barely a moment to check my e-mails, and I was chomping at the bit at times to write, but in the end, I wouldn’t change a minute of it!
Hey Stacey! Isn’t he cute? I promise to get a better picture of him soon…I snapped that with my camera phone so I could throw the post up as quickly as possible. LOL And now he’s sitting on my lap while I type. LOL
And yes, that’s so true as well — there are plenty of times while I’m busy with other things that my fingers itch to hit the keyboards…especially if I’ve just had some great ideas wander through my head for the next scenes or things I need to put down.
I swear we are twins! We lost our Tucker this summer. And our Cooper came to live with us in August. He’s a Landseer Newfoundland and already weighs 35 pounds at four months.
Life is what it is. As writers, we work through, over, around, and under whatever it throws at us. I’ve written around The Only’s hectic schedule, my outside job (and weeks of being on 24-hour call), through sickness, in health, and for richer and poorer. LOL Yes. It’s a bit like wedding vows, isn’t it?
I saw some interesting stats about RWA…There are 10,165 total members. PAN (published with either an advance or have received $1000(?) in royalties for one book) members accounted for 1,853, and there were 2,243 PRO members–those of use either e-published or having finished a manuscript and are actively seeking publication. I have to wonder what those 6,069 other people are doing. When I look at those of us here, at Mama Writers, at other blogs…we all have LIFE coming at us at warp speed, and yet we write, we polish, we submit. We’ve been published or been close and we keep trying, keep writing, in spite of or because of life. There are days when life bowls us over, and there are days when we can squeeze out a few words here and there.
Enjoy the new puppy. And enjoy your son. Life is always there. So’s our writing. 😀