Friday, February 25, 2011

In a Perfect World

After repeatedly vowing to get to it, but watching it collect dust on my shelf instead, I finally picked up my copy of Stephen King's On Writing. I have to say, so far, I'm learning more about Stevie boy's life than the fine art of crafting words. Since it's his book, I suppose he can write about whatever the hell he wants. After all, the man is obviously doing something write (oh yeah, I just went there). Still, I'm finding myself not really giving a shit about his earlier years.

Needless to say, I'm thirty pages into it and am thinking that, instead of complaining about never having the time to write, I should have just written--or skipped through the pages chronicalling Stevie's gas-filled childhood.  So here I am, blogging at midnight--seven hours before I have to wake up and go to work again.

Time; they say it goes by when you're having fun.  Well, whoever "they" are, they completely neglected the fact that it also goes by fast when you're running around like a chicken with your head cut-off dying for a chance to do those fun things.  Time, in general, is fleeting.  Especially for those of us who have lives outside a budding literary career (okay, so I can dream).  For me, I have a full-time job, various weekly commitments, a four-year-old and a husband getting ready to deploy overseas.  Time, for me, needs to apply the emergency break.

Somewhere in this book--lord knows if I'm ever going to get there--King tells us we need to spend time writing everyday and also gives the reader quite a lengthy reading list.  That may be all fine and dandy for him, an established author, but what about the rest of us forced to reside in the stringent confines of reality?  How many of us can honestly spare thirty minutes, let alone an hour to write something that may or may not be nonesense on a page?  Oh, and we have to do this between our jobs, kids and trying not to neglect our spouses.

In a perfect world, this extra time will appear from somwhere within the depths of the twenty-four hours we're allotted everyday. In a perfect world, I can be a paralegal, mother, volunteer, army wife and author with the greatest of ease. In a perfect world, time will stand still.


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