Writing Challenge?

My wonderfully dead fish has done wonders. I have more room for books on the shelf where she was, and I have more time because I don't have to gently drop pellets into her bowl every night. But seriously, the biggest response to that situation was that I wanted to write about it and I want to be more committed to commitments, writing in particular.

I am thinking of doing a challenge, which is insane, I have to say, but very tempting. Apparently there is a National November Writing Month challenge for writers to write 50,000 words of fiction in the month of November. To give you an idea, this is about 2 1/2 single space pages per day. I am happy if I accomplish one single space page in a sitting. Just a thought.

Friends and Fish

I have several reasons for returning to this blog. The most pertinent is that a wonderful friend told me he would kill me if I did not keep writing it--somehow this threat was actually inspiring... Another ironically encouraging event is the death of my fish, who was only a year old. I am not sure whether it was the shadowed location I'd placed her in, the cloudy water (which I've been told beta's can handle!), or a natural lifespan. Regardless, walking exhausted into my bedroom to be greeted by a horrific smell, my dad telling me something in my room must be dead, and finding that it was not a mouse or a cat producing such a strong stench, but my poor tiny little fish who couldn't even float to the top because she was held down by a giant shell, which was meant to be a place under which she could have some privacy, yes, all affected me. As I curled up on my bed wanting to throw up because I just haven't had enough sleep lately to handle the trauma or to refrain myself from panicking to my dad, who graciously transported my fish from the bowl to the toilet (luckily I was sane enough to notice that my dad purposely did not flush the toilet), I recognized the importance of order and the side effects of personal derangement: fish die, I panic, my mom has to learn that fish's eyes often bulge when they die, and my dad has to come to the rescue, in other words deal with his 23 year-old daughter who lives in the basement. And in the chaos, I don't write. Me not writing is disorder at this point, and thanks to friends and fish, I'd like to continue not only to write, but to post on this blog sporadically and often enough that when I don't write friends will threaten, encourage, or a little of both to get me back on track.

Play it as it lies.

This week is a landmark, or at least it will be if it marks anything significant. In my last post, I wrote of how I have cut back my hours so that I can fill in those missing hours with writing. This is the week in which that takes effect. So here I am with my scheduled time devoted to writing, obligated to finish the hours I've required of myself, and I couldn't be happier because of it.

It is not easy to become satisfied with the current occupation we've committed to, nor to discover which one it is that will satisfy us. I have frustrated myself for years, not only longing to write, but longing to do a billion things, and finally narrowing it down to this one thing that should be such a focus for me. And after we do find it, it is not easy to be make it happen. And then when we make it happen, it is not easy to be faithful to it and to wait until we see fruit born from it.

It may seem a stretch, but I am reminded of a scene from Happy Gilmore (not my favorite movie) in which one of the men in the golf tournament grudgingly adheres to the "play it as it lies" standard, forcing him to swing off another very large and gruff-looking man's foot. I kept thinking of this scene as I attempted to play frisbee golf yesterday and repeatedly needed to throw the frisbee from an awkward angle around some plants. What I find frustrating about these situations is that neither the man in the movie nor I could hope to make it into the hole in our next shot, and we likely would have to aim in a direction that is not our goal, but that will bring us closer to our goal.

Now, I can look back at my life and think of every awkward angle that unexpectedly brought me here and have confidence in every one that will bring me forward. That is what will give me the persistence in reading short stories when I really like novels and writing for practice when I really just want to write stories, and it will give me the patience not to try to publish works that aren't ready and to be faithful to the hours scheduled that do not seem productive.

When we look at our golf ball buried under leaves or in a sandtrap, we have to accept one thing: our golf ball is buried, and we most likely need to face that situation before we take the swing that puts the ball in the hole. That is why now is perfect, because I will never get there without being here.