Lynn Slaughter

Photo by Kenny Eliason on Unsplash

Do you ever have weeks where a bunch of little things go wrong and somehow, it feels overwhelmingly distracting and frustrating? Well, I had one of those weeks recently. My PayPal account was hacked, and suddenly, I was sending out hundreds of invoices for hundreds of dollars to folks I’d never heard of. It took me a LONG time to figure out how to talk to a live person and get help. Meantime, after sending proof that I’d made a good faith effort to pay a bill, I discovered that they apparently didn’t pay any attention to my letter and copies of attempts to pay the bill and were piling on additional late fees to the initial late fee.

Then there was the issue with the subscriber link to my blog not working and my being unable to understand how to fix it or translate what the “support chat” person was telling me. The joy of being a non-digital native!

Needless to say, my grumpy meter was on high. The last thing I felt like doing was writing and pushing forward on my new work-in-progress, a sequel to MISSED CUE. But, I told myself, this book isn’t going to get written by itself. So, despite my foul mood and my doubts I could get any decent writing done, I worked on my novel.

Now here’s the strangest thing. When I read over the pages I’d produced when I didn’t want to write and was sure I couldn’t write, they weren’t horrible. In fact, I couldn’t really tell the difference between the writing I’d done on my grumpy, distracted days and my ‘life-is-wonderful’ days.

I was once again reminded that creative work is ultimately unpredictable, and the only way we can assure we make any progress is when we dig in at the times we least feel like doing so.

And you know what? Doing the work is an amazing salve for all those accumulated, annoying events that are a part of all of our lives. I realize I’m lucky to be a writer—even on those days when I don’t want to be!