Today was the submission deadline for the Loft Literary Center’s Mentor Series. I have known about this program, and the deadline, for nearly two months. I have been counting down the remaining ‘writing days’ for almost six weeks. I could have, in this time, put together fifteen to twenty double-spaced pages of my best prose. I did not.
I procrastinated. I kept starting out in new directions. I brainstormed. I wrote fragmentary scenes. I even made an outline, something I have not done since sometime in the last century. But I brought nothing to fruition until, last night, exhausted but determined to patch something together, to at least submit something, even if not my best work, I fell asleep kneeling next to my son’s bed while putting him to sleep. When I awoke in this same position two hours later, my kneecaps numb, my ankles seized at a painful angle, I knew that it was over. There is, as they say, always next year.
So I am now determined to keep forging ahead, to keep writing something, however seemingly-insignificant, every single day. Eventually I am bound to finish something.
