How Much Do You Want It?

This morning I asked myself how much revision I thought I could accomplish in the next week. We have Monday off school so that’s a little bonus time. I want to use it well. I want to write every day and clear 30 pages a day. 30 pages a day would take 3-4 hours a day. And would mean I could finish the revisions in a week. The only reason not to do this is because I don’t care enough about my goals to move forward so fast.

It’s a paradox: I feel a great urgency to move to the next level, yet I’ve been working and reworking these same novels for years. An urgent need to move forward. Feeling stuck. That’s what would hold me back–feeling stuck, feeling unlucky, feeling like life’s too short to spend all day in a room alone writing.

And yet that’s what it takes folks. So how much do I want these novels finished, polished, shined to a gleaming sheen and sent out into the world? I want that more than almost anything else.* And I’m willing to do the work it takes to make it happen.

*Visiting both my kids this year is at the top of my wish list. Of course I put my marriage and other important relationships before writing. When I’m workinng, it has to be said, teaching comes first. I cannot be a bad teacher. I just don’t have it in me. I have to give students all I’ve got and that means they come first.

Bottom line is, I see a chance to get a lot of writing done in the next week. My calendar isn’t crammed full of activities. I can do it, I want to do it, I will do it.