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Writing is such a privilege.
Right now, Iâm sitting in my office, upstairs in my house. There is a cat sleeping next to me under the throw, one small paw sticking out, flexing as she dreams of motherâs milk. Another snoozes at my feet, her gray fur as smooth as the velvet footstool she sleeps upon. Night has fallen. These strange early nights in the first several days after the time change are so startling. I get lost in my work, and it feels wrong to see blackness outside my windows. It makes me want to nest, to cook warm, nourishing foods, to light a fire and open a bottle of wine and read. But thatâs not in service to my story. I have at least another hour of writing ahead before I can perform these homely chores. I am drafting hard, living in the story, dreaming about the characters. I am on deadline.
Itâs a four-letter word, deadline. Itâs a word we can utter among our brethren and receive compassionate murmurs of comfort. They know. They understand. Deadline means cricks in necks, weight gain, fear and frustration, cramped wrists, ignored phone calls and texts and emails, forgotten obligations. Deadline means youââthe friend, the spouse, the parent, the sibling, yes, even sometimes the childââwill come second, or third, or fourth on the list of importance, because nothing, nothing, is more important than getting the story done on time. (Dogs, I feel, are the exception to these inattentions; nothing helps a writer on deadline more than a long walk.) Even if youâre given our meager attention, it will be like conversing with a ghost. We might be there in the room with you physically, might even be looking at you, but mentally, we are elsewhere. We are in the story. We are living and breathing the life of our characters, not our own. We are creating.
What a gift this is, this transcendence into another world. The idea that we can remove ourselves from the life around us and retreat into a land of make believe, get lost in a world we create out of whole cloth, excites me. Even non-fiction writers are able to escape into the lands they are creating, though theirs might not have fire-breathing dragons or pirate ships or spies lurking in the dark.
As stressful and difficult as this time in the bookâs life cycle is, I am grateful for every moment. I do this for me, yes. But I also do this for you. Thank you for being a part of my world. Iâm grateful for you.
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