When Things Don’t Go According to Plan

If all writers did was write, there would be no problem. You’d get up in the morning. Breakfast would somehow be waiting. No need to get the kids off to school. That was taken care of.

Just grab that cuppa Joe, sit down with your characters and create all manner of amazing prose. You wouldn’t have to worry about the phone interrupting your plot because it just wouldn’t ring. After all, you just write.

Oh, and that boss you’re not too happy with? He wouldn’t exist. No social media, no to-do list. Sounds like a writer’s dream doesn’t it?

Well, there are just two tiny problems with that:

 

1) It ain’t gonna happen.

2) You’d have no life experiences to draw from. What would you write about?

When things don’t go according to plan—and they never do—writers begin to wish for something different. We somehow believe we’d be better off if we just had nothing else tugging at us, we could be best-selling authors.

Can I tell you something? The best books out there today were not written in solitude by authors who had no other obligations or responsibilities, other than sitting down at the modern day typewriter each day and hammer out word count.

The best books are birthed out of the chaos of our day to day lives, in the midst of turmoil, busy schedules, juggling responsibilities and with everyone in their lives making demands on their time.

Writers get panicky when things don’t go according to plan. Whether they write too long and miss a conference call or miss writing time because the kids are sick, it can put the author on a downward spiral very quickly.

Don’t let that happen to you. Know that things will never go according to plan. You a are a writer in a world that is turning. Your life is moving will eventually work out. Don’t sweat it. Enjoy the confusion. Take notes. Use your calamities in your books.

It’s all good.

Do you ever feel like you want to be all alone with nothing to do but write? Share it here!

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