“This is a topsy-turvy night.”
Hi everyone… I’m Deanne’s daughter and she said I could write this since I am the one who had the overhear (which I am pretty sure is not an actual word since, when I used it in my classroom my teacher didn’t understand what I was talking about). I thought my mom was really funny when she said this, because we were doing homework and for once I really wanted to keep doing it, but I’m not sure why now, it just was really fun to do my math that night. But my mom said it was too late and I needed to go to bed, and I begged her to let me finish my homework but she said, “No… you can’t do any more homework.” And we both started laughing. So I had to put it away and go to bed and now I am still not finished with it, but it’s not really that much fun anymore so now I have to do it when it’s not fun. So I was thinking about this overhear, because my mom said I needed to have a point to make about it, and I decided my point would be that sometimes something is fun one day and not fun the next and that we should always finish something when it is fun, because otherwise we might not finish it. Like we are having the alphabet days of school now because it is the last 26 days and there are 26 letters in the alphabet; so today is day ‘F’ and we are supposed to dress in our fan colors for our favorite team. My dad really loves the Giants, (he said, NY, not SF:>) and so I wanted to dress up in blue and red for them, but then today, when I went to find something to wear it didn’t sound fun anymore and I decided I didn’t want to do it so I wore purple and black instead. So actually I guess sometimes you can’t finish something when it is fun and then you just don’t do it. So, that’s all from me because now I have to go to school (which is definitely not fun today, except for sometimes our class bunny is sort of fun) and my mom is going to finish this. Bye Note from Deanne: really…. What more is there to say? Right now I am feeling more like playing on Twitter than on writing any more of my blog, so given my daughter’s take on life that is what I am going to do. Sorry. See you Friday:>)
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“How much farther?”
I am clearly no map-reader; because it amazed me how the lines of a trail map could look so flat compared to the reality of the steep hill we were climbing. I was plowing up the hill trying, by sheer force of will, to motivate my seven year old to follow. She, on the other hand, was lagging behind with her dad, every so often trying to grab the backpack he wore so he could pull her (you can imagine how that went.) Finally, at a shady spot, we stopped and took a break and after a bit of water and rest we got ready to move again. She told us that this was no longer the “best day ever”… and I told her that in order to have a best day, you sometimes had to have a worst. I’m not sure my life philosophy made sense to her, but I have been thinking about it ever since. There are a lot of highs with writing: The moment when my story comes together in the most amazing and unexpected way; the kudos I get from friends, family or best of all, readers; the completion of a story I thought I would never finish. But for each of these high points, writers are overwhelmed with many more low points: characters I can’t seem to make come alive; rejection after rejection from agents; family or friends who focus on the errors in the writing rather than the sweet success of having written at all. Each of these is enough to keep many people from doing the hard dirty work of sticking with it, day after day. And, unlike some things which you can’t back out of once you have started (having a child or taking a hike, though not necessarily of the same magnitude, both come to mind here), with writing it is easy to let the manuscript sit unfinished…. Something perhaps to be worked on at some nebulous future date. So, why do we do it? What keeps an author in her seat (other than the tall non-fat latte) when we are ready to pull out our hair in frustration? Those moments of high come at a price… and for some are so orgasmically great that they make up for all of the pain we may suffer for the craft. Like raising children, it is difficult to understand the joys until you experience them. But to new writers I would just say, there would be no books if the highs didn’t truly exist. The view looking out from behind the waterfalls was spectacular… it was worth the price of the long climb back up the mountain. And today, when I asked my daughter what my overhear should be her answer was: “Best day ever.” |
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June 2020
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