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Tuesday, March 9, 2010

For Everything There Is A Season

This may be blasphemy, but I have least favorite portions of Scripture. That passage, Ecclesiastes 3:1-9, referenced in today's title is one of them.

I've heard it so many times. Seems like every pastor ever has preached on it. The Beatles even made it into a song. I think it was The Beatles. I don't know; somebody sang it long enough ago that DJ's don't tell you who it is because they assume you know. Mandisa (is that her name?) just remade it into a song, and I like her version.

The passage makes a point I agree with (good thing since it's Scripture). I'm a seasonal gal myself. I wish society was back on an agrarian timetable. I would be happier and not so out-of-sync with the rest of the world.

In the winter, I slow down. I'm cold and sleepy. I can take 4 hour naps in the winter, plus sleep 8 or 9 hours at night. I don't want to get up and move. I don't want to write, or clean, or garden or do anything, really, except stay under my Snuggie and allow 3 to 4 cats to curl up on me.

As the days get longer, I wake up sooner. I've been waking up at 4:40 AM for the past week without an alarm clock. My eyes just open. I'm staying awake until 10 or 10:30 every night, and finding it hard to fall asleep. I'm excited about daylight savings time because it means I can garden when I get home from work.

American society tells me I'm weird for this. Not the PC crowd 'cause they would never say anything so intolerant, but you know they're thinking it. I'm expected to act the same no matter the season. Well, excuse me, but no thank you.

I like the rhythm God built into the world. I think He knew what He was doing, giving us up times and down times and times in between.

Now we come to the crux of the matter, the moment I make what will sound like an excuse.

I write books in the summer. Both of the books I've completed have been completed during the hot Kansas months of July, August and September. Why? Because I don't garden in the heat and the mosquitoes, and I'm awake and active for longer periods of time. I'm not shivering at the keyboard or trying to stay awake in the dark of 5 PM December. For me, summer is down time. The nieces usually go to camps and whatnot. No plays to attend. No Kansas legislature to monitor. My relatives tend to vanish on vacations, so I'm by myself in the house with the computer. Why wouldn't I write?
I've been trying to write a book during the wrong season, mostly because everyone else is doing it and it seems to be what's expected of me.

You know what? It's not my season for writing. I'm not in this to churn out a book a year or support my family (not yet anyway). I'm a Type B nerd. I don't have anything to prove.

So I'll focus on the two books I do have, getting Star of Justice to the right publisher and getting Elementals ready for submission, and worry about Past Ties come July.

Having written this, I will mostly likely throw myself into Past Ties and complete it in a month. I'm quirky that way. Sometimes I just need permission to fail before I can succeed.

Anyway, I'm taking my word counter off for now (even though I've been working on the book). I will change focus to more outside time and more social time and less new writing time and we'll see what happens.

This is my season to garden, and I'm going to enjoy it.

2 comments:

  1. You were close. It was The Byrds.

    Ecclesiastes is my other half's favorite book of the Bible. That says a lot about him, don't you think?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hehe! There's a reason Solomon went a little nuts at the end. Wisdom isn't all it's cracked up to be.

    ReplyDelete

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