Talking to the lovely and gracious Susie May the other day, we hit on the topic of survival. She’d been exhorting her college son on how to manage his time, get through the rigors of college.

“Take it one day at a time,” she said. “Don’t get lost by looking too far into the future.”

It hit a chord with me. I remembered reading an article about POWs during Viet Nam. The ones who were hopeful, looking forward to getting out, knowing release would come soon ended up being the ones who did NOT survive.

The prisoners who lived just for today, whose only goal was to survive the day, were the ones who endured their years in prison. Some were POWs for seven years.

Not a pretty or hopeful existence.

Writing a novel falls somewhere in between being a college student and POW. And the same mentality applies.

We have to take our task one day at a time. Too much speculation, too much dreaming, too much wondering how it will be when we get our first contract will derail us from the day-to-day of putting words on the page.

“Take care of today,” Jesus said.  “It has enough trouble.”

It’s human nature to dream, to long to peer into the future. After all, God put eternity on our heart. (Ecc 3:11) He’s also put it in our heart to long for the appearing of the Lord. But we can get so focused on “getting out of here” we miss the opportunity to partner with Jesus now for His kingdom to come on earth as it is in heaven.

So goes our writing. Focus on today. Meet your word count. Hunker down and live in the weeds of your story. Figure out just who Jack and Jill really are, and what story journey they are taking.

Writing is hard work. If it’s too easy, you’re not really doing the work of writing a crafted, layered novel.

I’m fast drafting a new novel. Trying to keep up with NaNoWriMo and I’ll tell you, it’s hard. I don’t know my characters. I’m not sure where to take them exactly. From a surface view, I know exactly what this story is about and who’s telling it.

But when I get down to the words and all the spaces in between, I’m not as confident as I’d like to be.

So I remind myself. Take it one day at a time. Keep your deadline and daily word count in view, but today is about 3000 words. No more. No less. Hit it and you’re done.

The beauty is I’ll have discovered more and more of my story and the heart of my characters.

That will make tomorrow easier. Or harder… Hmmm…

Yeah, writing is hard work.

Do what needs to be done today. Let tomorrow take care of itself.

Rachel Hauck is an award winning, best selling author who’s made plenty of “author mistakes” and lived to tell about it.