At the end of the day, you either wrote something or you didn’t.
Maybe it was a banner day, when the stars all aligned and the metaphors all sang and the characters all looked up from the page to offer their thanks for three dimensions instead of two, for flesh and bone and blood and tears, for life itself, even though some of them will be dead by page 243. Especially because of that.
Maybe it was a prolific day, a day of ten thousand perfect words, or ten thousand shitty words. A marathon that left you sweaty and exhausted and finger-cramped and grateful and utterly bewildered by your apparent good fortune.
Maybe it was a puzzle-working day. A battle royale with an impossible scene that has held you hostage for weeks. And maybe you finally solved it. Or maybe it finally solved you. Defeat and delete.
Perhaps it was a forgettable day. The kind that dissolves into a thousand others like it. Your words didn’t sing. They didn’t shout. They didn’t even whisper. They just filled the space like gray clouds in a gray sky.
Maybe you spent the day in Catatonia, staring at the laptop like a powerless stupor-man. Empty. Lost. Wordless. The blank page mirroring your blank expression and somehow turning it into a sneer.
Maybe you walked by the laptop a hundred times. On your way to breakfast. On your way to get the kids ready for school. On your way to work. On your way to make dinner. On your way to clean up that mess in the bathroom. On your way to bed. Maybe you didn’t type a single word.
Maybe you wrote exactly twenty-seven words.
Maybe you deleted a chapter. Or two. Or three. Or all of them.
Maybe you wanted to quit. Maybe you did quit.
Maybe your computer died and you lost everything.
Maybe you started a new book.
Or maybe you typed “The End.”
At the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter what kind of a day it was.
Because at the end of the day you’re still a writer. And there’s another day waiting…at the end of the day.
Comments
8 responses to “At the End of the Day”
THANK YOU. I needed that.
You’re welcome. I needed THAT.
Big picture: “At the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter what kind of a day it was.
Because at the end of the day you’re still a writer. And there’s another day waiting…at the end of the day.”
Hopefully.
I was trying to be unusually positive with that last line. The original draft of the post ended like this:
“Because at the end of the day you’re still a writer. And there’s another day waiting at the end of the day.
Probably.”
So, yeah. I thought about that.
Today, of all days, I needed to hear what you said. I have to believe I am still a writer at the end of the day no matter how many times I have passed my computer or stared at that damn blinking cursor. Thank you!
True that! I can not fight it. If someone were listening I might speak incessantly. Lacking this, I have paper.
I’ve just discovered your wonderful blog and I wanted to say thank you. As a new author (residing in an old head) your words provide comfort and terror in unequal measure. I would say more but I have a number of years worth of wisdom to catch up on. Thank you once again.
Thanks so much for your kind words. I’m all about providing comfort and terror. Enjoy the blog. And be sure to tell all your writing friends.