I am beginning to feel the tension. The tension that comes in planning the next phase of your life. Today is journal entry 899 and I am beginning to look ahead to what will be.
I am so very grateful that I have someone in my life who wants to go on this journey with me and help me turn out a short story every couple of weeks or so. The only way this happens is if I apply the same rules to fiction as I do to non-fiction. I have a tendency to get lost and spin my wheels when creating fiction. I dabble and play too much and rarely finish, but I am giving myself two weeks. That’s it. Ten or so morning sessions to create something that has a beginning, middle and an end. The task at hand is to finish, no matter what it looks like and move on to the next piece of writing.
I think everyone needs someone in their life that cares and is willing to help them push. It creates tension. Uncomfortable but very important tension. That in between state of this will suck and oh my God I can’t believe how great this is going to be and people are going to love it. The tension has to be there because nothing is set down on paper, so of course this tug of war will always be present. It will remain present until you either finish or fail to finish. There is no in-between, which is why it’s important to be ok with failure.
The scientific community, no matter what the experiment, wants to hear a yes and a no. Yes means that they are onto something and no means that they don’t ever have to attempt the same experiment ever again. Both are good. The yes is one step ahead of the no, but both take up residency next to each other. It’s the maybe that exists nowhere. It is the maybe, the unfinished, should, could, would work in our life that we cannot do anything with.
This is not a time of our life to spend in maybe. This is the time of our lives to embrace the tension of pursing what we dream of being.
I can’t believe that in three days a chapter of my life comes to an end. I also don’t really know what I am going to do with all of the words that I written. No matter how I view the process, I have 451,000 words under my belt. Had you told me that when I got started I probably would have ran or thought you mad.
So cheers to tension. Cheers to change. Three to go.
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